Ennen ja nyt - Historian tietosanomat

Love poetry by monks: Buddhist notions in late Heian and early Kamakura love poetry

Kirjoittanut Rein Raud

Julkaistu 2016-11-18 09:11:21

18The aim of the present paper is to explore the relations between Buddhist ideas and love poetry at the end of Heian and the beginning of
Kamakura periods, during the time when the world of c ourt poetry was dominated mostly by the tastes of the Mikohidari sc hool, and in partic ular
the role that monk-poets suc h as Saigy, Jien and Jakuren had in shaping them. As it is well known, quite a number of famous c ourt poets have
been monks sinc e the end of the 9th c entury and partic ularly many appear in the 12th c entury, and it has also frequently been pointed out that
the move from high to late Heian aesthetic , in addition to tec hnic al innovations, c hanges in imagery etc ., involves a shift in values that brings
the world of c ourtly poetry c loser to the world of Buddhist ideas, so that some groups of lay poets also adopted the attitudes of monks toward the
world to a c ertain extent. This is the period when a shift in the c arrier type oc c urred in the c ultural system of c lassic al Japanese poetry: when
formerly it had been predominantly the prac tic e of the gallant, witty and sensitive c ourier, the master of the poetic oc c asion, then at the end of
the 12th c entury the c arrier of the prac tic e was better c harac terised as a withdrawn, dedic ated, still sensitive, but more introverted, almost
rec luse-like devotee of the high art. That the soc ial and politic al proc esses whic h brought about the dec line of the c ourtier-c entered order were
the main reason for this is probably c lear without further c omment.
At the same time, however, this is also the period when the system of poetic c omposition to set topic s had finally firmly established itself, and thus
it was institutionally inevitable that most of these poet-monks had to c ompose love poetry even if their vows logic ally would have forbidden them
to do it. They did use some obvious strategies to c irc umvent this problem, for example, a lot of these poems, when lifted out of c ontext, c an
equally well be read not as poems by abandoned lovers but as lamentations of solitude, written by frustrated hermits in mountain huts where no
friends visit them. At other oc c asions, monk-poets, like many laymen as well, resort to a persona, adopting, for instanc e, the viewpoint of a lady
waiting for her lover, whic h enables them to express the honi (original essenc e) of some c ertain aspec t of love while remaining personally
neutral to the c ontent of the poem. In fac t, on many oc c asions and espec ially during poetry matc hes, this was prec isely what they were supposed
to do. For example, in the Roppyakuban utaawase, a major poetic matc h organised in 1193 and judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei, there were 50
topic s of love altogether, 15 of these dedic ated to various phases of an imaginary love affair, 5 desc ribed the feelings of love during various times
of day and night, 5 had to do with distanc es and age differenc es, and 25 topic s treated love in c omparison to the moon, c louds, mountains,
smoke, grass, insec ts, pic tures, prostitutes, sailors etc . On the whole the c atalogue of love topic s yields an almost sc ientific ally minded taxonomy,
and it may have been fairly easy for a monk to keep suc h a mind while c almly c omposing poems to suit the requirements of eac h topic .
This seems to indic ate that the love poetry of monks may mostly have been no more than a series of literary c onstruc ts, stylised fabric ations that
would have emulated the feelings expressed in allegedly genuinely motivated texts by lay authors. But a c loser look at both does not reveal any
signific ant differenc es of quality between love poems by monks or laymen. This again would lead us to think that perhaps most waka on the topic
of love, no matter how intense feelings they seem to c onvey, are in reality just the outc ome of a language game with no really deep emotional
bac kground. This, in turn, seems to be in c ontradic tion with another aspec t of love poetry, namely its func tional use in c ourting prac tic e, where
men and women nec essarily had to c arry out an exc hange of love poems for the duration of a relationship, and the suc c essful outc ome of
c ourtship may at least partly have depended on the quality of the poems. Certain elements of a game were surely present in these exc hanges
during the entire Heian period, but if the poems involved had been just intellec tually c onstruc ted c ombinations of stoc k imagery, this prac tic e
would hardly have persisted, nor poetic (and sometimes, as in the c ase of Izumi Shikibu, even sc andalous) reputations built on it. Thus it seems
that the problem of love poetry by monks touc hes more widely on the status of love poetry as suc h in the framework of set topic c omposition.
This is also a part of a bigger issue of poetic prac tic e and attac hment to the world as suc h, known as the kygen kigo argument ac c ording to a
phrase from a poem by Bo Juyi in whic h he denounc ed his poetry as wild phrases and floating utteranc es, an unworthy pursuit c ompared to
Buddhist spiritual training. Although not too frequent, it is not at all unc ommon for monks to c omment on their vows in poetry, bec ause, as the
kygen kigo argument had made c lear, their writing itself is problematic , indic ating as it does that they have been unable to leave their worldly
attac hments behind. So, for example, Saigy:
Senzaish 1066 Saigy

hana ni somu
kokoro no ikade
nokoriken

the mind that is c oloured

by the flowers how is it
that it is still there

sutehateteki to

when I was sure I had

omou wagami ni

left it behind for good

An exc essive joy on seeing the flowers taints the mind of the poet, who had thought he had freed himself of suc h an attac hment. But it is also
possible to c hannel a similar sentiment into a mood that is more fitting for a Buddhist frame of mind, as, for example, Jakuren has done:
Shinkokinsh 1939 Jakuren

kore ya kono
ukiyo no hoka no
haru naran
hana no toboso no
akebono no sora

is this the spring

that is not of our
fleeting world?
through the narrow of the flowery door
the sky at dawn

The poem bears the topic of The joy at the first opening of the lotus flower, referring to the lotus bud in whic h the reborn adept awakens in the
Pure Land of Amitabha, seeing the sky when the flower slowly opens as a door however, it desc ribes equally well a muc h more real spring dawn
in a hermits hut, who is overjoyed by the sight of flowers just as the speaker of Saigys poem, but for whom the sentiment marks an ac hievement
rather than hindranc e in the quest of enlightenment. As it is well known, the c ontradic tion between poetry and spiritual training is overc ome by
the later c ontemporaries of Saigy by turning poetry into a michi, a voc ation that adapted aspec ts of Buddhist training and whose pursuit was
ac c ordingly albeit not equal, but still c omparable to Buddhist prac tic e.
However, if the abstrac t joy at c ontemplating the world may have found justific ation through the approximation of poetry to meditational
prac tic e, the same outc ome seems hardly likely for verse that speak of explic itly forbidden desire. An early example by Henj states the problem:
Kokinsh 226 Henj

na ni medete

seduc ed only by your name

oreru bakari zo

I have pluc ked you,

ominaeshi
ware ochiniki to
hito ni kataru na

maiden-flower
do not tell anybody
about my fall

Ac c ording to Tsurayukis prefac e to the Kokinsh , this poem had been written when Henj had fallen from a horse on the Saga field, but this
explanation is not repeated in the anthology, so we may fairly safely assume that this is a c ase of overinterpretation, of providing the poem with
an explanatory c ontext after the fac t that may have nothing whatsoever to do with the original setting. The poem makes muc h better sense as a
c omment on monastic vows: pluc king a maiden-flower would be a breac h of these if seen as an expression of suppressed desire, and it is even
tempting to read the hito of the last line not as people, others, but beloved, whic h is a fairly c ommon first meaning of the word in the Kokinsh.
This would make the poem a real maze of denials, espec ially if we might think of it as sent, with the flower, to a person: first, the poet, being a
monk, denies his feelings, then he projec ts them to the flower that he pluc ks, seduc ed by its name, next, ac knowledges the breac h of vows, and
then denies his feelings as a Freudian slip of a kind, asking the flower to keep it sec ret, and finally he writes a poem about it for either a partic ular
person or even the whole world to see. Henj, a fairly well c onnec ted c ourtier, was 34 years old when he entered monkhood after the death of his
protec tor, emperor Nimmy, and he must already have been an ac c omplished poet at the time, sinc e four of his poems have been inc luded in
anthologies under his lay name. Although he was a c areer monk, his rapid advanc ement in the Tendai sc hool would hardly have been likely if he
had openly kept a c ourtly lifestyle, but it is nevertheless c lear that the world of amorous games is not quite alien to him, and an exc hange with
Ono no Komac hi reported in the Gosensh (Nos 1195-96), even if spurious, testifies to an ambiguous reputation. Thus there is no reason to put
this kind of verbal play beyond him, and the disparity between his status with the c orresponding c ode of behaviour and his personal feelings may
well have c aused real problems for him also during the latter part of his life.
A typologic ally similar tension, although expressed in a muc h more subdued and roundabout manner typic al for the period, c an be seen in a
poem by Jien that appears in the first sc roll of love poetry of the Shinkokinsh:
Shinkokinsh 1030 Jien
,
waga koi wa
matsu o shigure no
somekanete
makuzu ga hara ni
kaze sawagu nari

my love is like
the pine of whic h the long rains
c annot c hange the c olour
on the field of the leaves of truth
the rustling of the wind

Makuzu is botanic ally arrowroot, but in the poetic c ontext this translation would be misleading. The leaves of this plant are green on the
outside and whitish on the inside, whic h is why it is assoc iated with the autumn winds that reveal their hidden c olour, the ura, or true feelings, and
thereby they are also assoc iated with urami, or resentment. The range of the image is fully disc losed in the poem by Shune, in whic h makuzu
makes its only other appearanc e in the Shinkokinsh:
Shinkokinsh 440 Shune

arashi fuku
makuzu ga hara ni

the storm is blowing

on the field of the leaves of truth

naku shika wa

deer are c rying

uramite nomi ya

in resentment only

tsuma o kou ran

still longing for their mates

Jiens waka has two images that are related to c olour (=love): first, the c olour of the pines (=longing), whic h remains the same regardless of the
rain (= tears), and sec ondly, the noise of the autumn wind is heard from the field of the leaves of truth, whic h have to bare their inner feelings,
their true whitish c olour. The poem would make little sense as a c onventional pledge of unc hanging feelings, sinc e the sec ond image is
autumnal and not related to the beginning of a love affair at all but it reads well as a reflexion of the hidden distress of a priest fallen in love:
all tears notwithstanding, his longing remains prec isely what it is, an unc onsummated longing, bec ause the wind reminds him of his true mind
that should be set on the pursuit of enlightenment.
Apart from the underlying personal problem, there is, of c ourse, little resemblanc e between Henjs poem and Jiens. The playful series of denials
and textual gestures present in Henjs waka is immediately readable while Jiens poem plainly presents a juxtaposition of images that merely hint
at an untold story. The differenc e stems, above all, from the c hange of standards of who a poet should be: in Henjs time, the monk-poet had to
live on the terms of the world of c ourtiers, while for Jien and his like-minded c ontemporaries the goal of poetic prac tic e was rather an
investigation into ones deep self.

This shift affec ted everything, from the underlying moods to imagery and even syntax. In a well-known passage from Kamo no Chmeis
Mumysho, Shune desc ibes the c ontemporary style as follows:
For example, in autumn twilight there might be no particular colour in the sky, nor sound to be heard, no particular motive whatsoever to be
thought of, but all of a sudden your tears begin to flow. Shallow people would find nothing remarkable here, because they are only able to be
moved by cherry blossoms and maple leaves that one can see with the eyes[1] .
We should note that the expression no partic ular c olour in the sky is not merely a figure of speec h. When we look at the c hanges in poetic
frequenc y of the key images mentioned here, we find that some have indeed c hanged drastic ally from the 10th c entury. For instanc e, the
frequenc y of the word iro drops from 7 in the Kokinsh to 4.34 in the Senzaish and 4.49 in the Shinkokinsh. To be sure, a c ertain dec rease
had oc c urred in its use already in the early imperial anthologies (the frequenc ies are 5.89 for the Gosensh and 5.22 for the Shish), but even
if we take the whole of the Sandaish as a c ertain standard, there is still a drop to about 75% in its usage in the anthologies where the
c ontemporary style dominates. Somewhat lesser drops c an be seen in the usage of words suc h as hana and sakura, and a slightly bigger one in
the usage of ume (drops to 66% of the Sandaish standard in the Shinkokinsh), but on the whole this still c annot be blamed only on the
c olourful nature of these images: for instanc e, the frequenc y of kasumi drops to 80% in the Shinkokinsh, while sakura is only down to 85%
more likely, this shows the adversity of the poets to too frequently used and slightly worn-out images in general. As a matter of fac t, the frequenc y
of the less-exploited momiji (0.91 in the Kokinsh) ac tually rises during the period, reac hing 152% of the Sandaish standard in the
Shinkokinsh.

Murasaki Shikibu watc hing the moon at Ishiyama temple, by And Hiroshige (1797-1858).
At the same time, the c hanges in the use of the word sora are truly spec tac ular. Its poetic frequenc y surges from 2 in the Kokinsh to 4.88 in the
Senzaish (where it passes iro for the first time) to an even more prominent 6.82 in the Shinkokinsh. This is 217% of the Sandaish standard for
the Senzaish and 305% for the Shinkokinsh, whic h is more than remarkable given that this has not been a neglec ted and redisc overed word
with a poetic frequenc y of 2.24 in the Sandaish it ranges between sakura (2.67) and ume (1.9). Quite c learly there must be something in the
semantic load of the word itself that lends it a new expressive potential.
There are several possible explanations, one of whic h has prec isely been suggested by Shune the c hange in the tonality of poetry in general,
a c ertain move toward less poignant imagery that may work to c onvey a subdued melanc holy as in the sabi style or be loaded with a mystic al
mood as in ygen, in any c ase a mood toward a visual ambivalenc e that both demonstrates the sensitivity of the poet and requires a lot of it from
the rec ipient. In this sense it is c harac teristic that in roughly one fourth of the poems in whic h appears in the Shinkokinsh, the word sora is used
to finish the poem with a taigendome, an elliptic al sentenc e that ends in a noun. All of this might explain the popularity of the word in general,
and partic ularly for seasonal poetry, but it is still hard to see why the frequenc y of the word is partic ularly high in the love poetry sc rolls of the
anthology, amounting to 8.32 or 371% of the Sandaish standard.
It is my opinion that the main reason for this is the Buddhist c onnotation of the word, sinc e the c harac ter for sora, , is also used for k,
emptiness. In fac t, the possibility of the Buddhist overtone in a love poem c reates an interesting tension, whic h reac hes beyond the negative
value of emotions in the Buddhist framework: the word sora also has a range of poetic ally produc tive meanings from nervousness and unstability
to lies. In traditional love poetry, all these moods are lamentable, ones personal inability to c alm down just as well as the potentially false
pretenses of the partner. Therefore, the word has traditionally had a negative value in love poems, as in
Kokinsh 513 Anon.

asana asana
tatsu kawakiri no
sora ni nomi

morning after morning

the river mist rises to the sky
in just as hazy

ukite omoi no

bitterness flows the world

aru yo narikeri

where there is love

On the other hand, k as emptiness refers to the Buddhist ultimate reality, whic h should really have no c onnotations at all, but if any, then
definitely not negative ones, sinc e emptiness, for the lay c ontext, was something rather to be grasped, understood and attained, not repelled or
lamented. This meaning has traditionally been ac knowledged to be ac tive in many seasonal poems of the period that use the image, espec ially
in a taigendome c onstruc tion, ending the desc ription of sc enery with a switc h to the broader view of the sky, as well as the spiritually broader
Buddhist view of the world at the same time.
Another word that should not be forgotten in this c ontext is tsuki, the moon, the poetic frequenc y of whic h has risen c onsiderably sinc e the early
Heian times. While in the Sandaish it is 6.77, it reac hes 14.49 in the Senzaish (214%) and 18.65 in the Shinkokinsh (275%), its growth thus
not muc h behind the frequenc y of sora. Sora also develops a slight, but mentionable dependenc y on tsuki. Their joint appearanc es have a
frequenc y of 2.17 in these anthologies, whic h is c onsiderable in itself, and tsuki also appears in 36% of the poems that have sora, while the
c orresponding number was only 16% in the Sandaish.

This growth of popularity is c learly c onnec ted to the stronger position of Buddhist values, moon being a popular symbol for enlightenment, as
c an be seen f.ex. in the poem by Saigy:
Sankash 1085

yama no ma ni
tsuki sumu maji to
shirareniki

the dwelling plac e of the moon

is not between the mountains
as I now know

kokoro no sora ni

sinc e the time I saw it shine

naru to mishi yori

in the sky of my mind

But passions are strong and stay hidden even after one has reac hed suc h an enlightened state of mind, whic h may well be threatened by them:
Shinkokinsh 1280 Sen

sono mama ni
matsu no arashi mo
kawaranu o
wasure ya shinuru
fukeshi yo no tsuki

just as before
the storm in the pines
has not c hanged
are you not forgetting that
you moon in the dark of the night

Shinkokinsh 1268 Saigy

kuma mo naki
ori shimo hito o
omoiidete

even on moments
when no c orner of the sky
remains without light

kokoro to tsuki o

I remember her

yatsushitsuru kana

and alas, my mind taints the moon

Of c ourse, the image of the moon has also traditionally also had a different value in love poetry, influenc ed by the Chinese tradition. Expec tedly
we find in the Shinkokinsh poems where the moon appears on the tear-wet sleeves (1136, 1139), the moon that waits together with the
neglec ted lover (1204) and so on, and in most of these poems the moon is c onnec ted to sorrow rather than happiness in one poem (1138) the
speaker explic itly states tsuki wo mo medeji, I do not like the moon.
However, there are also poems that bridge the gap between the two values of the moon, poems where the moon is likened to the beloved, or to
the true love itself. An interesting c ase is an exc hange adapted to the Shinkokinsh from the Murasaki Shikibu sh. In its original form it reads
like this:
Murasaki Shikibu sh 93; Shinkokinsh 1262 Murasaki Shikibu

iru kata wa
sayaka narikeru
tsukikage o

where the moon sets

the light shines brightly
for this light

uwa no sora ni mo

my absent mind in the upper skies

machishi yoi kana

I was waiting tonight

Murasaki Shikibu sh 94 Anon.

sashite yuku
yama no ha mo mina
kakikumori
kokoro mo sora ni
kieshi tsukikage

halting, I go
the slopes of the mountains are all
wrapped in darkness
and my mind, the vanished
moonlight in the sky

The answer plays on the two meanings of sasu (to halt and to shine ) and c ompares the speaker itself to the moonlight, asserting that
now that he is separated from his lover, he is bac k in darkness and unstability. However, the editors of the Shinkokinsh made a small, but
extremely revealing c orrec tion to the answer-poem and c hanged the partic le mo in the penultimate segment to no:
Shinkokinsh 1263


kokoro no sora ni

and from the sky of my mind,

kieshi tsukikage

the moonlight has vanished

Now the speaker no longer identifies himself with the moon, but the moon has been the experienc e of love, the feeling of the meeting he has left
behind. Here there is no other way to interpret the image of moonlight than in the vein of Saigys poem above, as a state of mind akin to
enlightenment, whic h the lovers reac h when they are together. After this meeting, the mind returns, on the one hand, to the hazy and bitter
unstability, and, on the other hand, to the emotionless void, barren without enlightenment.
Read in this key, quite a number of love poems that have the image of the moon reveal another layer of meaning.
Shinkokinsh 1267 Saigy

tsuki nomi ya

only the moon

uwa no sora naru

katami nite

the keepsake in the upper skies

for my absent mind

omoi mo ideba
kokoro kayowan

when tender thoughts arise

my heart will find the way

The moon is a keepsake of what the enlightened mind is for a poet: not a state with no emotions at all, but, on the c ontrary, a mind full of
intense, positive and joyful emotions whic h c an just as well be inspired by love, as soon as it transc ends the c onfines of rough passion. Thus there
is, after all, no struc tural paradox inherent in love poetry by monks. The move from the bright world of the c ourtier to the deep world of the
dedic ated has brought about a c hange in the c onc ept of love as well, c hanging it from the passionate emotion that leaves bitter resentment in its
wake into a profound movement of the mind c apable of opening it up for enlightenment another gateway for the poet through whic h to reac h
for the essenc e of all things.
REFERENCES:
Kamo no Chmei. Mumysh. Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 65. Iwanami shoten, Tky 1961.

34

1. Kamo no Chmei, 87. [Takaisin]