| I have a Japan guide book to foreign travellers wriiten by English, Insight Guides Japan. The book say on Niigata as follows; "North along the coast is Niigata in which novelist Kawabata Yasunari wrote in his 1947 novel Yukiguni. Except as a transit point, there is little in Niigata for foreign travellers." However, Yasunari said in his Nobel prize memorial lecture as follows; "Quintessence of Japan is four seasons in Echigo and haiku by Ryoukan." *Echigo is the current Niigata prefecture. *Ryoukan was a quiet and eccentric Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. He was born in Izumozaki town in Niigata prefecture. (2007/7/29) Following sentence is a part of Nobel lecture by Kawabata Yasunari. We can read and hear the sound of full version at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-lecture-e.html ........ When we see the beauty of the snow, when we see the beauty of the full moon, when we see the beauty of the cherries in bloom, when in short we brush against and are awakened by the beauty of the four seasons, it is then that we think most of those close to us, and want them to share the pleasure. The excitement of beauty calls forth strong fellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word "comrade" can be taken to mean "human being". The snow, the moon, the blossoms, words expressive of the seasons as they move one into another, include in the Japanese tradition the beauty of mountains and rivers and grasses and trees, of all the myriad manifestations of nature, of human feelings as well. That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen. "In the spring, cherry blossoms, in the summer the cuckoo. In autumn the full moon, in winter the snow, clear, cold." One can, if one chooses, see in Dogen's poem the beauty of the four seasons no more than a conventional, ordinary, mediocre stringing together, in a most awkward form of representative images from the four seasons. One can see it as a poem that is not really a poem at all. And yet very similar is the deathbed poem of the priest Ryokan (1758-1831): "What shall be my legacy? The blossoms of spring, The cuckoo in the hills, the leaves of autumn." In this poem, as in Dogen's, the commonest of figures and the commonest of words are strung together without hesitation --- no, to particular effect, rather --- and so they transmit the very essence of Japan. And it is Ryokan's last poem that I have quoted. "A long, misty day in spring: I saw it to a close, playing ball with the children. "The breeze is fresh, the moon is clear. Together let us dance the night away, in what is left of old age." "It is not that I wish to have none of the world, It is that I am better at the pleasure enjoyed alone." Ryokan, who shook off the modern vulgarity of his day, who was immersed in the elegance of earlier centuries, and whose poetry and calligraphy are much admired in Japan today --- he lived in the spirit of these poems, a wanderer down country paths, a grass hut for shelter, rags for clothes, farmers to talk to. The profundity of religion and literature was not, for him, in the abstruse. He rather pursued literature and belief in the benign spirit summarized in the Buddhist phrase "a smiling face and gentle words". In his last poem he offered nothing as a legacy. He but hoped that after his death nature would remain beautiful. That could be his bequest. One feels in the poem the emotions of old Japan, and the heart of a religious faith as well. ......... (2007/8/1) |
E-mail: hyamada[at]uranus.dti.ne.jp