Shadowings Part 8

Beaten by my jealous lover,-- Like the semi on the pine-tree I can only cry and cling!

And indeed the following tiny picture is a truer bit of work, according to j.a.panese art-principles (I do not know the author's name):--

Semi hitotsu Matsu no yu-hi wo Kakae-keri.

Lo! on the topmost pine, a solitary cicada Vainly attempts to clasp one last red beam of sun.

IV

PHILOSOPHICAL verses do not form a numerous cla.s.s of j.a.panese poems upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic. As the metamorphosis of the b.u.t.terfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem of the soul's ascension, so the natural history of the cicada has furnished Buddhism with similitudes and parables for the teaching of doctrine.

Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our former existence no more than the semi remembers the sh.e.l.l from which it has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:--

Ware to waga Kara ya tomuro-- Semi no koe.

--YAYu.

Methinks that semi sits and sings by his former body,-- Chanting the funeral service over his own dead self.

This cast-off skin, or simulacrum,--clinging to bole or branch as in life, and seeming still to stare with great glazed eyes,--has suggested many things both to profane and to religious poets. In love-songs it is often likened to a body consumed by pa.s.sionate longing. In Buddhist poetry it becomes a symbol of earthly pomp,--the hollow show of human greatness:--

Yo no naka yo Kaeru no hadaka, Semi no kinu!

Naked as frogs and weak we enter this life of trouble; Shedding our pomps we pa.s.s: so semi quit their skins.

But sometimes the poet compares the winged and shrilling semi to a human ghost, and the broken sh.e.l.l to the body left behind:--

Tamashii wa Ukiyo ni naite, Semi no kara.

Here the forsaken sh.e.l.l: above me the voice of the creature Shrills like the cry of a Soul quitting this world of pain.

Then the great sun-quickened tumult of the cicadae--landstorm of summer life foredoomed so soon to pa.s.s away--is likened by preacher and poet to the tumult of human desire. Even as the semi rise from earth, and climb to warmth and light, and clamor, and presently again return to dust and silence,--so rise and clamor and pa.s.s the generations of men:--

Yagate shinu Keshiki wa miezu, Semi no koe.

--BASHo.

Never an intimation in all those voices of semi How quickly the hush will come,--how speedily all must die.

I wonder whether the thought in this little verse does not interpret something of that summer melancholy which comes to us out of nature's solitudes with the plaint of insect-voices. Unconsciously those millions of millions of tiny beings are preaching the ancient wisdom of the East,--the perpetual Sutra of Impermanency.

Yet how few of our modern poets have given heed to the voices of insects!

Perhaps it is only to minds inexorably haunted by the Riddle of Life that Nature can speak to-day, in those thin sweet trillings, as she spake of old to Solomon.

The Wisdom of the East hears all things. And he that obtains it will hear the speech of insects,--as Sigurd, tasting the Dragon's Heart, heard suddenly the talking of birds.

NOTE.--For the pictures of semi accompanying this paper, I am indebted to a curious ma.n.u.script work in several volumes, preserved in the Imperial Library at Uyeno. The work is ent.i.tled _Chufu-Zusetsu_,--which might be freely rendered as "Pictures and Descriptions of Insects,"--and is divided into twelve books. The writer's name is unknown; but he must have been an amiable and interesting person, to judge from the nave preface which he wrote, apologizing for the labors of a lifetime. "When I was young," he says, "I was very fond of catching worms and insects, and making pictures of their shapes,--so that these pictures have now become several hundred in number." He believes that he has found a good reason for studying insects: "Among the mult.i.tude of living creatures in this world," he says, "those having large bodies are familiar: we know very well their names, shapes, and virtues, and the poisons which they possess. But there remain very many small creatures whose natures are still unknown, notwithstanding the fact that such little beings as insects and worms are able to injure men and to destroy what has value. So I think that it is very important for us to learn what insects or worms have special virtues or poisons." It appears that he had sent to him "from other countries" some kinds of insects "that eat the leaves and shoots of trees;" but he could not "get their exact names." For the names of domestic insects, he consulted many Chinese and j.a.panese books, and has been "able to write the names with the proper Chinese characters;" but he tells us that he did not fail "to pick up also the names given to worms and insects by old farmers and little boys." The preface is dated thus:--"_Ansei Kanote, the third month--at a little cottage_"

[1856].

With the introduction of scientific studies the author of the _Chufu-Zusetsu_ could no longer hope to attract attention. Yet his very modest and very beautiful work was forgotten only a moment. It is now a precious curiosity; and the old man's ghost might to-day find some happiness in a visit to the Imperial Library.

j.a.panese Female Names

[Decoration]

I

BY the j.a.panese a certain kind of girl is called a Rose-Girl,--_Bara-Musume_. Perhaps my reader will think of Tennyson's "queen-rose of the rosebud-garden of girls," and imagine some a.n.a.logy between the j.a.panese and the English idea of femininity symbolized by the rose. But there is no a.n.a.logy whatever. The _Bara-Musume_ is not so called because she is delicate and sweet, nor because she blushes, nor because she is rosy; indeed, a rosy face is not admired in j.a.pan. No; she is compared to a rose chiefly for the reason that a rose has thorns.

The man who tries to pull a j.a.panese rose is likely to hurt his fingers.

The man who tries to win a _Bara-Musume_ is apt to hurt himself much more seriously,--even unto death. It were better, alone and unarmed, to meet a tiger than to invite the caress of a Rose-Girl.

Now the appellation of _Bara-Musume_--much more rational as a simile than many of our own floral comparisons--can seem strange only because it is not in accord with our poetical usages and emotional habits. It is one in a thousand possible examples of the fact that j.a.panese similes and metaphors are not of the sort that he who runs may read. And this fact is particularly well exemplified in the _yobina_, or personal names of j.a.panese women. Because a _yobina_ happens to be identical with the name of some tree, or bird, or flower, it does not follow that the personal appellation conveys to j.a.panese imagination ideas resembling those which the corresponding English word would convey, under like circ.u.mstances, to English imagination. Of the _yobina_ that seem to us especially beautiful in translation, only a small number are bestowed for aesthetic reasons. Nor is it correct to suppose, as many persons still do, that j.a.panese girls are usually named after flowers, or graceful shrubs, or other beautiful objects. aesthetic appellations are in use; but the majority of _yobina_ are not aesthetic. Some years ago a young j.a.panese scholar published an interesting essay upon this subject. He had collected the personal names of about four hundred students of the Higher Normal School for Females,--girls from every part of the Empire; and he found on his list only between fifty and sixty names possessing aesthetic quality. But concerning even these he was careful to observe only that they "_caused_ an aesthetic sensation,"--not that they had been given for aesthetic reasons. Among them were such names as _Saki_ (Cape), _Mine_ (Peak), _Kishi_ (Beach), _Hama_ (Sh.o.r.e), _Kuni_ (Capital),--originally place-names;--_Tsuru_ (Stork), _Tazu_ (Ricefield Stork), and _Chizu_ (Thousand Storks);--also such appellations as _Yoshino_ (Fertile Field), _Orino_ (Weavers' Field), _Shirushi_ (Proof), and _Masago_ (Sand). Few of these could seem aesthetic to a Western mind; and probably no one of them was originally given for aesthetic reasons. Names containing the character for "Stork"

are names having reference to longevity, not to beauty; and a large number of names with the termination "_no_" (field or plain) are names referring to moral qualities. I doubt whether even fifteen per cent of _yobina_ are really aesthetic. A very much larger proportion are names expressing moral or mental qualities. Tenderness, kindness, deftness, cleverness, are frequently represented by _yobina_; but appellations implying physical charm, or suggesting aesthetic ideas only, are comparatively uncommon. One reason for the fact may be that very aesthetic names are given to _geisha_ and to _joro_, and consequently vulgarized. But the chief reason certainly is that the domestic virtues still occupy in j.a.panese moral estimate a place not less important than that accorded to religious faith in the life of our own Middle Ages. Not in theory only, but in every-day practice, moral beauty is placed far above physical beauty; and girls are usually selected as wives, not for their good looks, but for their domestic qualities. Among the middle cla.s.ses a very aesthetic name would not be considered in the best taste; among the poorer cla.s.ses, it would scarcely be thought respectable.

Ladies of rank, on the other hand, are privileged to bear very poetical names; yet the majority of the aristocratic yobina also are moral rather than aesthetic.

But the first great difficulty in the way of a study of _yobina_ is the difficulty of translating them. A knowledge of spoken j.a.panese can help you very little indeed. A knowledge of Chinese also is indispensable.

The meaning of a name written in _kana_ only,--in the j.a.panese characters,--cannot be, in most cases, even guessed at. The Chinese characters of the name can alone explain it. The j.a.panese essayist, already referred to, found himself obliged to throw out no less than thirty-six names out of a list of two hundred and thirteen, simply because these thirty-six, having been recorded only in _kana_, could not be interpreted. _Kana_ give only the p.r.o.nunciation; and the p.r.o.nunciation of a woman's name explains nothing in a majority of cases.

Transliterated into Romaji, a _yobina_ may signify two, three, or even half-a-dozen different things. One of the names thrown out of the list was _Banka_. _Banka_ might signify "Mint" (the plant), which would be a pretty name; but it might also mean "Evening-haze." _Yuka_, another rejected name, might be an abbreviation of _Yukabutsu_, "precious"; but it might just as well mean "a floor." _Nochi_, a third example, might signify "future"; yet it could also mean "a descendant," and various other things. My reader will be able to find many other h.o.m.onyms in the lists of names given further on. _Ai_ in Romaji, for instance, may signify either "love" or "indigo-blue";--_Cho_, "a b.u.t.terfly," or "superior," or "long";--_Ei_, either "sagacious" or "blooming";--_Kei_, either "rapture" or "reverence";--_Sato_, either "native home" or "sugar";--_Toshi_, either "year" or "arrow-head";--_Taka_, "tall,"

"honorable," or "falcon." The chief, and, for the present, insuperable obstacle to the use of Roman letters in writing j.a.panese, is the prodigious number of h.o.m.onyms in the language. You need only glance into any good j.a.panese-English dictionary to understand the gravity of this obstacle. Not to multiply examples, I shall merely observe that there are nineteen words spelled _cho_; twenty-one spelled _ki_; twenty-five spelled _to_ or _to_; and no less than forty-nine spelled _ko_ or _ko_.

Yet, as I have already suggested, the real signification of a woman's name cannot be ascertained even from a literal translation made with the help of the Chinese characters. Such a name, for instance, as _Kagami_ (Mirror) really signifies the Pure-Minded, and this not in the Occidental, but in the Confucian sense of the term. _Ume_ (Plum-blossom) is a name referring to wifely devotion and virtue.

_Matsu_ (Pine) does not refer, as an appellation, to the beauty of the tree, but to the fact that its evergreen foliage is the emblem of vigorous age. The name _Take_ (Bamboo) is given to a child only because the bamboo has been for centuries a symbol of good-fortune. The name _Sen_ (Wood-fairy) sounds charmingly to Western fancy; yet it expresses nothing more than the parents' hope of long life for their daughter and her offspring,--wood-fairies being supposed to live for thousands of years.... Again, many names are of so strange a sort that it is impossible to discover their meaning without questioning either the bearer or the giver; and sometimes all inquiry proves vain, because the original meaning has been long forgotten.

Before attempting to go further into the subject, I shall here offer a translation of the Tokyo essayist's list of names,--rearranged in alphabetical order, without honorific prefixes or suffixes. Although some cla.s.ses of common names are not represented, the list will serve to show the character of many still popular _yobina_, and also to ill.u.s.trate several of the facts to which I have already called attention.

SELECTED NAMES OF STUDENTS AND GRADUATES OF THE HIGHER NORMAL SCHOOL FOR FEMALES (1880-1895):--

Number of students so named.

_Ai_ ("Indigo,"--the color) 1 _Ai_ ("Love") 1 _Akasuke_ ("The Bright Helper") 1 _Asa_ ("Morning") 1 _Asa_ ("Shallow")[33] 2

[33] Probably a place-name originally.

_Au_ ("Meeting") 2 _Bun_ ("Composition"--in the literary sense)[34] 1

[34] Might we not quaintly say, "A Fair Writing"?

_Chika_ ("Near")[35] 5

[35] Probably in the sense of "near and dear"--but not certainly so.

_Chitose_ ("A Thousand Years") 1 _Chiyo_ ("A Thousand Generations") 1 _Chizu_ ("Thousand Storks") 1 _Cho_ ("b.u.t.terfly") 1 _Cho_ ("Superior") 2 _Ei_ ("Clever") 1 _Ei_ ("Blooming") 2 _Etsu_ ("Delight") 1 _Fude_ ("Writing-brush") 1 _Fuji_ ("Fuji,"--the mountain) 1 _Fuji_ ("Wistaria-flower") 2 _f.u.ki_ ("f.u.ki,"--name of a plant, _Nardosmia j.a.ponica_) 1 _f.u.ku_ ("Good-fortune") 2 _Fumi_ ("Letter")[36] 5