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The Dark Path: Images of Longing in Japanese Love Poetry
Author(s): Edwin A. Cranston

Source: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies , 1975, Vol. 35 (1975), pp. 60-100
Published by: Harvard-Yenching Institute
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2718791
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THE DARK PATH: IMAGES OF LONGING
IN JAPANESE LOVE POETRY
EDWIN A. CRANSTON
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
[This article was completed shortly before the death of my friend

and colleague John Lyman Bishop, to whom it is dedicated.]
O NCE a man, having come of age and gone through the capping
ceremony, went hunting on his estates at the village of Kasuga
near the Nara Capital. In that village lived two sisters of a fresh
and unspoiled beauty. The man watched them through the fence. He was
surprised to have discovered such lovely girls; they seemed strangely out
of keeping with the old homeland of the former capital. A dizzying excite-
ment seized his heart. Cutting off the skirt of his hunting garment, he
wrote a poem and sent it in. He was wearing a garment of Shinobu print.
Kasugano no A cloak stained purple
Wakamurasaki no By the young and tender herbs
Surigoromo Of Kasuga Moor -
Shinobu no midare Wild patterns of a yearning heart
Kagiri shirarezu Whose turmoil knows no bounds.
The man composed these lines and sent them in without a moment's
hesitation. He must have found the situation quite intriguing. His poem is
essentially the same in feeling as
Michinoku no Random-patterned cloth

Shinobu mojizuri Of Shinobu in the Northland:
Tare yue ni Pray because of whom
Midaresomenishi Did this turmoil first begin?
Ware naranaku ni Surely not because of me!
In old times men used to display in this way the courtier's quick and
elegant passion.
The young courtier in this epi-sode from Ise monogatari I%1b

(The Tales of Ise),' an early tenth-century collection of love stories,
1 Also translated in Frits Vos, A Study of the Ise-Monogatari with the Text According to
the Den-Teika-Hippon and an Annotated Translation (Mouton & Co., 1957), i, 165;
Helen Craig McCullough, Tales of Ise: Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan (St
ford, 1968), pp. 69-70; and H. Jay Harris, The Tales of Ise (Tuttle, 1972), pp. 35-37. My
60

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THE DARK PATH 61
experiences the onrush of sexual desire in terms persistent in the

tradition of Japanese love poetry. No sooner has he feasted his eyes
on the beauty of the two sisters than his feelings "become disturbed"
(kokochi madoinikeri). The verb madou -S means to go astray, lose
the path, by extension to become lost in the blindness of passion.
The aroused, excited state is treated as a loss of sense control and a
departure from the path of enlightenment. Kokoro noyami bCD 0 J, the
Buddhist concept of the "darkness of the heart," the error of human
entanglement in all forms of desire and attachment, lies in the back-
ground of such passages.
Once, according to a story found in both The Tales of Ise and the
Kokinwakashin,2 the famous early Heian lover and poet Ariwara no
Narihira 74i2 (825-880) had a brief affair with the young prin-
cess serving as the Ise Shrine Virgin. On the morning after a fleeting
tryst held by the pale light of the moon Narihira received this poem
from the Virgin:
KKS xIII:645
Kimi ya koshi Did you come to me,
Ware ya yukikemu Or was it I who went to you,
Omoezu I cannot even think:
Yume ka utsutsu ka Was it a dream, or was it real?
Nete ka samete ka Were we sleeping, or awake?3
translation is based on the text edited by Otsu YViichi ' and Tsukishima
Hiroshi ,V in Nihon koten bungaku taikei 3 *ft M Lt,k (Iwanami
shoten, 1957), ix. A list of the abbreviations of titles of anthologies used in this article is
provided at the end.
2 For quotations from the Kokinwakashki and Shinkokinwakashui I have used the com-
mentaries in ;Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Iwanami, 1958), VIII, XXVIII, edited respectively
by Saeki Umetomo Jf1'fALE and by Hisamatsu Sen'ichi Xr4in-, Yamazaki
Toshio Itj , and Goto Shigeo 1VACRJ3; also the two commentaries by
Kubota Utsubo 'j [FE{ , Kokinwakashui hyoshaku t4+f tjk;f (Tokyodo,
ig6o) and Kambon Shinkokinwakashi hyoshaku '4,T-j 1111111 (T6kyodo, 1964). For
other imperial anthologies I have used the texts in Matsushita Daisaburo and Watanabe
Fumio 'T ? , Kokka taikan j :,k (Kadokawa shoten, 1963).
3 Closely analogous to and perhaps an allusive variation on MYS XII:2917 Anon.:
Utsutsu ni ka In reality
Imo ga kimaseru Did my sweet lady come to me,
Ime ni ka mo Or was it all a dream,
Ware wa matoeru And I but lost and wandering
Koi no shigeki ni In the thickets of my love?

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62 EDWIN A. CRANSTON
Equally dazzled by the half-real, half-dreamlike quality of their ex-

perience, Narihira answered:
KKS xIII:646
Kakikurasu In deepening
Kokoro no yami ni Darkness of the heart I wander,
Madoiniki Lost in bafflement:
Yume utsutsu to wa Let one wise in worldly love decide
Yohito sadame yo What is dream and what reality.
Such poems embody a quality not unlike the "elegant confusion"

so prominent in early Japanese verse. But this term, coined and made
current in the works of Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner,4 and so apt
that one cannot now discuss Japanese poetry without it, usually refers
to the conventional perplexity professed by the poet in the face of such
natural phenomena as snow and plum blossoms, as here by Izumi
Shikibu TRhU-kS (active late tenth - early eleventh centuries):
Ume wa haya The plum had early
Sakinikeri tote Blossomed, so I thought,
Oreba chiru Breaking a branch -
Hana to zo yuki no And snow, like petals scattering,
Fureba miekeru5 Cascaded to the ground.
Or this (MYS v:822) by Otomo no Tabito )kftMA (665-731):
Wa ga sono ni In my arbor now

Ume no hana chiru Petals scatter from the plum
Hisakata no Or is it snow
Ame yori yuki no That floats down drifting over us
Nagarekuru ka mo From the boundless sky?
Perhaps "passionate confusion" would be a better term for the equiva-

lent convention in love poetry. The emotional involvement of the poet
is certainly more intense, so overpowering in fact that he may seem
4 Especially their major study, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford, 1961). The phenom-
enon is also well discussed by Helen McCullough in the introduction to her translation,
Tales of Ise.
5 This poem is from Izumi Shikibu nikki liIi Eii a, an account of a love affair between
the poetess and a young imperial prince. The work is translated in Earl Miner, Jap-
anese Poetic Diaries (California, 1969), and Edwin A. Cranston, The Izumi Shikibu
Diary: A Romance of the Heian Court (Harvard, i969). The present translation is from
the latter book, pp. 185-186.

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THE DARK PATH 63
torn in two by it. An anonymous poem, KKS XI:523, expresses the

poet's amazement at finding his heart is no longer a part of him:
Hito o omou Is it then because

Kokoro wa ware ni This heart of mine that yearns for her
Araneba ya Is not within me
Mi no madou dani That I do not even know
Shirarezaruramu How I am lost in darkness?
The tone of such poems can be arch, as in this exchange from the
collection of Akazome Emon ^^X ,- an early eleventh-century
court poetess, which provides a typical example of the metaphor of
errant love. The poetess writes to a faithless lover:
Wa ga yado wa Pines about my house

Matsu ni shirushi mo Have served for nothing -
Nakarikeri Waiting is vain;
Sugimura naraba Were they but a cedar grove
Tazunekinamashi6 I should not want for company.
She makes a conventional pun on matsu ("pine" e / e wait" f.)

and an equally well recognized allusion to an anonymous old poem:
ZKT 32224
Wa ga yado wa The place where I dwell
Miwa no yamamoto Is under Miwa Mountain,
Koishiku wa And if you love me,
Toburaikimase Lord, seek me in this cottage
Sugi tateru kado With its cedars at the gate.
Emon's lover replies, picking up the pun on rnatsu, and adding one
on sugi ("cedar" " / 'pass" Aii1S):
Hito o matsu The mountain trail
Yamiaji wakarezu To the pines of waiting was
Mieshikaba Too faint to see,
Omoimadou ni And in the blindness of my love
Fumisuginikeri7 I strayed into the cedar grove.
Nevertheless, the tone more typically is serious, and reminiscent

of the depictions in Man'yo choka of temporary dementia caused by
grief. In the laments of the Man'yoshfi the bereaved one, overcome by
the shock of loss, often wanders disconsolate in the wild. For instance
6 CIaiko shokasha dp *t, Kochu Kokka taikei K. A k* (Kokumin

tosho kabushiki kaisha, 1929), XIII, 379.
7 Ibid.

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this, a passage from MYS II:194, on the death of Prince Kawashima

J)IIAT (657-691), by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 1i*,kZg (active
late seventh century) :8
20 Au ya to omoite And for this reason, inconsolable,

Tamadare no Have you perhaps now gone,
Ochi no ono no Hoping by some chance to meet him there,
Asatsuyu ni To the fields of Ochi,
Tamamo wa hizuchi Spattering your skirts with mud
25 Yugiri ni In the morning dew,
Koromo wa nurete Wetting your garments through
Kusamakura In the evening mist,
Tabine ka mo suru Sleeping on the grasses of the plain,
Awanu kimi yue All for the lord whom you will never meet?
A poem by Ki no Tsurayuki lt;t (ca. 868 - ca. 945), KKS xii

597, likens love to a path on which the lover travels and goes astray:
Wa ga koi wa Even though my love
Shiranu yamaji ni Is not an unfamiliar trail
Aranaku ni Through hills I have not trod,
Mayou kokoro zo How troubled is my wavering heart
Wabishikarikeri That wanders in the toilsome wild.
This too reminds one of the lovelorn Hitomaro crossing the mountains
away from his beloved in Iwami WiA:
MYS 11:131
Yasokumagoto ni At the fourscore bendings of the way

Yorozu tabi Ten thousand times
30 Kaerimi suredo I turn and look again,
Iyato ni But every time
Sato wa sakarinu Our village is yet further sunk away,
Iyataka ni And every mountain
Yama mo koekinu Taller than the one I crossed before.
35 Natsukusa no Like summer grasses
8 For text and commentary on Man'yo poems I have consulted chiefly Takagi Ichi-
nosuke r Gomi Tomohide 3i* ,W and Ono Susumu C ed.,
Man'yoshiu ; , Nihon koten bungaku taikei iv-vII (Iwanami, 1957-1969); Kojima
Noriyuki /J\1!,;t, Kinoshita Masatoshi 2JTiE, and Satake Akihiro ff1'r,
,X ed., Man'yosha, Nihon koten bungaku zenshi 111111 t II-iI (Shogakkan, 1971-
1972); and Kubota Utsubo, ed., Man'yoshu hyoshaku, Kubota Utsubo zenshu xIIi-xix
(Kadokawa shoten, 1966-1967).

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THE DARK PATH 65
Omoishinaete She must droop, sorrowing in her heart,

Shinofuramu Yearning for her love,
Imo ga kado mimu The dear girl whose gates I long to see:
Nabike kono yama 0 mountains, I command you to bow down!
Or of the same poet grieving over the death of his wife in Karu 4
when, bereft of his right mind, he suddenly alters her demise to a
going astray in the mountains. The whole poem-is filled with motion
along paths:
MYS 11:207-209
Ama tobu ya On the Karu Road,
Karu no michi wa Karu of the wing-filled sky,
Wagimoko ga Was the village
Sato ni shi areba Where she lived, my own dear girl,
5 Nemokoro ni And to look on her
Mimaku hoshikedo Was all I wanted in my heart:
Yamazu yukaba But had I always gone,
Hitome o omi There were many eyes of men;
Maneku yukaba Had I gone frequently,
10 Hito shirinubemi Others surely would have known.
Sanekazura So, like branching vines,
Ato mo awamu to After parting we would meet again,
Obune no I thought, as confident
Omoitanomite As one who rides in a great ship,
15 Tamakagiru And though ever yearning
Iwakakifuchi no Kept our love secret, deep and still
Komori nomi As a pool walled round with rock,
Koitsutsu aru ni Gleaming softly like a glinting gem.
Wataru hi no But as the coursing sun
20 Kureyuku ga goto Goes down the sky to darkness,
Teru tsuki no Or the radiant moon
Kumogakuru goto Is lost to view within the clouds,
Oki tsu mo no So she who lay with me
Nabikishi imo wa As yielding as the seaweed to the wave,
25 Momichiba no Passed and was gone,
Sugite iniki to As leaves of autumn pass and are no more:
Tamazusa no It was a messenger,
Tsukai no ieba Azusa-wood staff in hand, who brought the news.
Azusayumi His words buzzed in my ears
30 Oto ni kikite Like a distant sound of azusa-wood bows:
Iwamu sube Wordless, helpless,
Semu sube shirani Ignorant of all device,
Oto nomi o I could not bear to stand
Kikite arieneba Listening to the mere bruit of it,

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35 Wa ga kouru And so, imagining

Chie no hitoe mo Even the thousandth portion
Nagusamuru Of my longing
Kokoro mo ari ya to Might somehow be assuaged,
Wagimoko ga I went where she
40 Yamazu idemishi Had always gone to look about,
Karu no ichi ni To the market of Karu,
Wa ga tachikikeba And there I lingered listening.
Tamatasuki On the hilltop
Unebi no yama ni Of Unebi, called the jewelsash mount,
45 Naku tori no The birds were singing,
Koe mo kikoezu But I could not hear the voice I knew;
Tamahoko no Nor were there any
Michi yuku hito mo Passing on the jewelspear road,
Hitori dani Not even one,
50 Nite shi yukaneba Resembling her, of those who traveled there:
Sube o nami In my helplessness
Imo ga na yobite Crying my beloved's name,
Sode so furitsuru I waved my useless sleeves.
Akiyama no On the autumn hills

Momichi o shigemi The trees are dense with yellow leaves
Matoinuru She has lost her way,
Imo o motomemu And I must go and search for her,
Yamaji shirazu mo But do not know the mountain path.
Momichiba no Now that yellow leaves

Chiriyuku nabe ni Are scattering from the boughs,
Tamazusa no I see the messenger
Tsukai o mireba With his azusa-wood staff,
Aishi hi omoyu And days with her return to mind.
The beloved's house is situated on "the Karu Road"-the road

along which the poet goes secretly to meet her. The road is precious;
it must not be used too frequently lest he be discovered. When the
beloved dies she "goes away" like the autumn leaf. A messenger
comes to tell the poet, who then irrationally goes to the marketplace
to look. Suddenly, in lines 43-45, an image of mountains and birds is
introduced in the rhetorical device of joshi 1);MP or "preface." Super-
imposed on the statement that the poet cannot hear the voice of his
dead wife, the image of birds singing on Mount Unebi creates an
almost cinematic flash-the hallucination of a reeling mind. The poet
looks carefully at the travelers along the road-none of them resem-
bles his wife. The main poem leaves the poet waving his sleeves help-

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THE DARK PATH 67
lessly in the marketplace. In the first envoy the path is transposed to

the mountains, which are reintroduced abruptly, as if the hallucina-
tion had come back. A pathetic irony is here-the poet describes his
wife as having "gone astray," but it is actually he himself who wanders
dazed and deluded. The last envoy intensifies the irony. The mes-
senger is brought in again-to remind the poet of happy days when
the lovers used such a go-between to send word to each other.
The toilsomejourney of longing is the subject of yet another series of
poems by Hitomaro. MYSI :45-49 tells how Prince Karu "M.+, the fu-
ture Emperor Mommu ~tffUM (683-707; reg. 697-707), went with a
party of courtiers to camp on the fields of Aki %g in memory of his
deceased father, Prince Kusakabe :VR&-T: (662-689), who had often
gone hunting there. These public poems, solemn and reflective, con-
vey at once the awesome majesty of the divine imperium-the opening
encomium is conventional, and is here applied to a young prince of
fourteen years or less-and the fully human sense of desolation and
loss. The frenzy of grief is past; there is no evocation of its hallucina-
tory paroxysms, but rather of the sadness of memory and acceptance.
Yasumishishi Our mighty lord

Wa go okimi Who rules the land in all tranquility,
Takaterasu The Divine Child
Hi no miko Of the high-shining sun,
5 Kamunagara He who is a god
Kamusabi sesu to In action godlike now departs
Futoshikasu The firm-established
Miyako o okite City of the sacred rule,
Komoriku no And up mountain slopes
1o Hatsuse no yama wa By hill-secluded Hatsuse,
Maki tatsu On rough mountain tracks
Araki yamaji o Where the bristling timber stands,
Iwagane Brushing to the earth
Saeki oshinabe The rooted rocks and tangled trees,
15 Sakatori no Like a soaring bird
Asa koemashite In the morning clears the crest;
Tamakagiru And when evening comes
Yn sarikureba That gleams as softly as a glinting gem,
Miyuki furu On the snowy plain,
2o Aki no ono ni The vast fields of Aki,
Hatasusuki He spreads the ground
Shino o oshinabe With bannergrass and small bamboo,
Kusamakura And grass for pillow

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Tabiyadori sesu Takes a traveler's shelter there,

25 Inishie omoite Thinking of the days gone by.
Aki no no ni The travelers who take

Yadoru tabibito Shelter on the fields of Aki -
Uchinabiki Do they lie at ease,
I mo nurame ya mo Are they able to find sleep,
Inishie omou ni When they think of days gone by?
Makusa karu This place is desolate,
Arano ni wa aredo A moorland where men cut wild grass,
Momichiba no But to these fields
Suginishi kimi ga We come in memory of him,
Katami to so koshi Our lord who passed like the yellow leaf.
Himukashi no Eastward on the fields
No ni kagiroi no A flickering of flame begins
Tatsu miete To rise against the dark,
Kaerimi sureba And looking back the sunken moon
Tsuki katabukinu Is seen to rest upon the land.
Hinamishi nio Peer of the sun,
Miko no mikoto no His highness our most noble prince
Uma namete Would line up his steeds
Mikari tatashishi And start upon the royal hunt
Toki wa kimukau At this very hour that now has come.
Attachment drives the prince and his men on their wanderings-

the love of a son for his father, and the fealty of courtiers for their lord.
Since Buddhist doctrine assumes human attachment to be delusion,
a way of darkness, it is not surprising to find that love's path often
leads into the world of dreams. As Earl Miner has pointed out,9 the
dream is one of the key love images in Japanese poetry, and we have
already seen examples of dream poems in the exchange between
Narihira and the Ise Shrine Virgin. As we can see from their poetry,
the early Japanese explained dreams as activity of the spirit of the
sleeper. The spirit could leave the body and go where it wished; thus
people who longed for each other could visit in dreams. The path of
the disembodied spirit on such errands was called yumeji OAg, "the
path of dreams." The concept is employed in various ways. If a lover
cannot find his beloved in a dream, perhaps she has gone too far away
for his spirit to reach:
9 Earl Miner, "'Japanese and Western Images of Courtly Love," Yearbook of Compara-
tive and General Literature 15(1966).174-179.

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THE DARK PATH 69
KKS XI:524 Anon.

Omoiyaru Has she gone away
Sakai haruka ni To a realm too distant
Nari ya suru For my thought to reach?
Madou yumeji ni Wandering on the path of dreams,
Au hito no naki I meet no travelers.
Tears of longing shed during a dream of love may be likened to the

dewdrops along the dream-path, as in this poem by Ki no Tsurayuki:
KKS XII:574
Yumeji ni mo On the path of dreams,
Tsuyu ya okuramu Perhaps there too the dewdrops form,
Yomosugara For these sleeves that hastened
Kayoeru sode no All night long upon that road
Hijite kawakanu Are soaked, and will not dry.
Basically the same idea inspired this anonymous verse with its
elaborate conceits:
KKS XI:527
Namidagawa In this floating sleep,
Makura nagaruru Pillow bobbing down the current
Ukine ni wa Of my river of tears,
Yume mo sadaka ni I cannot see you steadily
Miezu zo arikeru Amidst my swirling dreams.
As in the poems by Narihira and the Ise Virgin, dream and reality
are often contrasted. Ono no Komachi 'J'J, the most famous
love poetess of the ninth century, is noted for her treatment of dreams.
One of her poems expresses the almost compulsive nature of her
dreaming, and yet its inability to satisfy her:
KKS xIII:658
Yumeji ni wa Though on paths of dreams
Ashi mo yasumezu With no resting for my weary feet
Kayoedo mo I bend my constant way,
Utsutsu ni hitome To meet you nightly thus is less to me
Mishi goto wa arazu Than one real glimpse of you, however rare.
Similar sentiments appear in a poem by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

i- Wt f(d. go i ):
KKS XII:558
Koiwabite Would that simple path
Uchinuru naka ni Were real, the dream-path I travel
Yukikayou When in weariness
Yume no tadaji wa From yearning for unanswered love,
Utsutsu naranamu I give myself to sleep.

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But the dream-path may have its advantages over the world of
reality. One is its privacy:
KKS xiii:657 Ono no Komachi

Kagiri naki Driven straight along
Omoi no mama ni That road by boundless longing,
Yoru mo komu I'll come though night should fall,
Yumeji o sae ni For surely on the path of dreams
Hito wa togameji No one will stop and question me.
And yet the lover's fear of discovery may be so great that it extends
even to his dreams:
KKS XII:559 Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

Suminoe no To Suminoe shore
Kishi ni yoru nami Waves advance across the sea:
Yoru sae ya Must I see him
Yume no kayoiji Even in the night look round
Hitome yokuramu And hesitate upon the path of dreams?
Komachi too has a poem in this vein:
KKS xIII:656
Utsutsu ni wa In the waking world
Sa mo koso arame Such caution may be well advised;
Yume ni sae But even in dreams
Hitome o moru to To see him shrinking from men's eyes
Miru ga wabishisa This is wretchedness itself.
For the despairing lover, weary of yearning, the dream may even
be unwelcome, making oblivion impossible and stirring once more the
embers of desire:
KKS XII:569 Fujiwara no Okikaze ALJ1 (early tenth century)

Wabinureba Weary with it all,
Shiite wasuremu to I have resolved to force myself
Omoedo mo To forget my love,
Yume to iu mono zo But these things called dreams still come
Hitodanome naru To cheat me into hope.
KKS XI:526 Anon.

Koishine to "Die of your longing!"
Suru waza narashi Such must be the end you wish me,
Mubatama no Night after night
Yoru wa sugara ni In glistening blackness until dawn,
Yume ni mietsutsu Coming ever in my dreams.
Or, though sweet, it may but make the next day more difficult:

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THE DARK PATH 71
KKS XII :575 The Priest

Hakanakute Flickering and gone
Yume ni mo hito o I saw her only in a dream,
Mitsuru yo wa But after such a night
Ashita no toko zo What a cheerless task it is
Okiukarikeru To rise and leave my morning bed!
Nevertheless, the usual attitude is that the dream is desirable, es-

pecially in the absence of any more tangible company:
ZKT 15614 Oshikochi no Mitsune i,J;L RMt (active late ninth -

early tenth centuries)
Yume ni dani If but in a dream
Miba koso arame I could see him, it were well;
Uzumibi no But with sunken coals
Okiite nomi zo Glowing for my company
Akashihatetsuru I have waited until dawn.
Dreams may be as good as or better than reality, either because the

reality is lacking:
KKS XII:553 Ono no Komachi

Utatane ni Once I fell asleep
Koishiki hito o In a momentary doze, and saw
Miteshi yori Him for whom I long,
Yume ch6 mono wa Since when I have begun to place
Tanomisometeki My trust in the things called dreams.
or because the reality itself has no more than a dreamlike character:
KKS xiii :647 Anon.

Mubatama no Reality that comes
Yami no utsutsu wa In the darkness of the glistening night
Sadaka naru Is little better
Yume ni ikura mo Than those clear and vivid dreams
Masarazarikeri That I have welcomed to my bed.
or simply on philosophical grounds, since Buddhism teaches that life

is after all a dream:
ISS 268 Izumi Shikibu
Miru hodo wa Even a dream
Yume mo tanomaru Can be trusted while it lasts,
Hakanaki wa But deluded
Aru o aru tote Is the man who spends his life
Sugusu narikeri10 Thinking the real is real.
10 For poems in Izumi Shikibu seishli 1111 ]Et I have relied on the commentary
Saeki Umetomo, Murakami Osamu fZ JL31n, and Komatsu Tomi fJ\j5N ,
Izumi Shikibu shui zenshaku 1 (T 6 shobo, 1959).

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When even the dream is taken from the dreamer there is a sense of
despair. In the following poem by Fujiwara no Ariie A* (1 155-1216)
snow has buried all the roads in the real world. Bamboos break under
its weight in the night, waking the sleeper and thus burying even the
path of dreams.
SKKS vI:673
Yume kayou Roads are all buried,
Michi sae taenu Even the path of dreams is gone:
Kuretake no In Fushimi Village
Fushimi no sato no The bamboos crack loudly as they break
Yuki no shitaore Beneath the weight of fallen snow.
Two contradictory conventions lie behind the dream poems. One is

that the yearning in the lover's heart causes him to dream of the object
of his love; i.e., the one who loves the more will see the other in his
dream, either himself traveling on the dream-path, or drawing the
loved one by the power of his longing. The other convention reverses
this: it is the yearning partner who causes the other to receive his
dream. Therefore the dreamer is the one who is loved, the one about
whom someone is thinking. It has been suggested that this second
attitude is the earlier historically." Several poems will illustrate- the
two approaches.
One of Komachi's- most famous poems clearly states the view that
the heart burdened with love draws its object in- a dream, and ex-
presses a preference for a dreamed world of love over a loveless world
of reality:
KKS XII:552
Omoitsutsu Was it then because
Nureba ya hito no I fell asleep with yearning thoughts
Mietsuramu That he appeared to me?
Yume to shiriseba Had I known it was a dream
Samezaramashi o I would never have awakened.
A very similar poem was written a century earlier by the exiled

Nakatomi no Yakamori tPRIYt (eighth century):
MYS xv:3738
Omoitsutsu Is it then because
Nureba ka motona I fall asleep with yearning thoughts
11 Omodaka Hisataka ' ,, ed., Man'yoshi chushaku 11 tWf, XII (Chuoko-

ronsha, 1963), 87-88.

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THE DARK PATH 73
Nubatama no That so constantly

Hitoyo mo ochizu Ever in the glistening night
Ime ni shi miyuru Without fail she comes in dreams?
The same implication seems to lie behind this poem by the maiden
Ato no Tobira 535St-:
MYS IV:710
Misora yuku Only one fleeting
Tsuki no hikari ni Glance by the light of the moon,
Tada hitome The sky-traveler,
Aimishi hito no Had that man and 1, and yet
Ime ni shi miyuru Now I see him in my dreams.
The case could not be put much more clearly than in a poem by
Oshikochi no Mitsune:
KKS xII:6o8
Kimi o nomi For you only
Omoine ni neshi Were my thoughts the night
Yume nareba You came in dreams:
Wa ga kokoro kara It was my heart, not yours,
Mitsuru narikeri That brought you to my bed.
It does nevertheless imply the existence of the opposite belief.

A member of the Japanese embassy to Silla W in 736 wrote the fol-
lowing:
MYS XV:3647
Wagimoko ga My dear girl at home,
Ika ni omoe ka How she must be yearning for me,
Nubatama no That she should appear
Hitoyo mo ochizu So faithfully in dreams by night,
Ime ni shi miyuru Coming ever in the glistening dark!
If it is assumed that dreams come not from one's own heart, but
from the thoughts of one's lover, then the absence of dreams implies
that one is no longer cared for. This idea lies behind such poems as
these:
MYS XI:2814 Anon.

Wa ga koi wa I find no comfort
Nagusamekanetsu For these pangs of yearning love;
Make nagaku The years have gone,
Ime ni miezute Each with its long count of days,
Toshi no henureba And she comes never to my dreams.

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MYS xi:2815 Anon.

Make nagaku Our bonds are broken,
Ime ni mo miezu Long the count of precious days
Taenu to mo With no dream of you
Wa ga katakoi wa Yet this one-sided love of mine
Yamu toki mo araji Seems never to find an end.
Man'yo and Heian poems mention methods of a presumably magical

origin which were employed to stimulate the occurrence of a wished-
for dream. One has to do with the location of the pillow. Whether a
mere fancy of the poets or an actual folk custom is involved here is not
certain, but in any case one finds poems such as the following:
KKS XI:516 Anon.

Yoiyoi ni From night to night
Makura sadamemu I move my pillow here and there,
Kata mo nashi I cannot decide:
Ika ni neshi yo ka How was it that I slept the time
Yume ni miekemu He appeared to me in dreams?
KKS XI:525 Anon.

Yume no uchi ni Pinning all my hopes
Aimimu koto o On our meeting in a dream,
Tanomitsutsu I passed the day,
Kuraseru yoi wa But now at evening I am lost
Nemu kata mo nashi For which direction I should sleep.
Much the more common method of assuring a dream, if we may

judge by the number of references to it, was to wear the garment in
which one slept inside out, or to turn up its sleeves. Man'yo poems
often refer to the sleeves of shirotae fi#, a white cloth made from the
fibers of the bark of the paper mulberry tree. The frequency with
which the term is used indicates its function as a conventional epithet
for "sleeves."
MYS XII:2937 Anon.

Shirotae no All through the night,
Sode orikaeshi Sleeves of white bark cloth turned back,
Koureba ka I yearned for her -
Imo ga sugata no Was it perhaps because of this
Ime ni shi miyuru I saw her figure in a dream?
The following is an exchange between separated lovers:
MYSxI:28L2 Anon.
Wagimoko ni In my helplessness

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THE DARK PATH 75
Koite sube nami To bear this longing for my girl

Shirotae no I took my sleeves
Sode kaeshishi wa Of white bark cloth and turned them back
Ime ni mieki ya Did you see it in your dreams?
MYS XI:.2813 Anon.
Wa ga seko ga So it was a dream -
Sode kaesu yo no My lover folded back his sleeves
Ime narashi Before he slept that night -
Makoto mo kimi ni But to me it was as real
Aerishi ga goto As if I'd truly met you.
With Komachi it is the whole robe which she turns inside out:
KKS XII:554
Ito semete When love presses me,
Koishiki toki wa Relentless in the glistening night,
Mubatama no I take off my robe,
Yoru no koromo o Then lie down to sleep again,
Kaeshite zo kiru Wearing it inside out.
So thoroughly is dream associated with love that the word comes

to work as a metaphor for love-making. In Izumi Shikibu nikki, an
account of the inception of Izumi Shikibu's affair with Prince Atsu-
michi ]U M (981-1007), the Prince uses this approach to his coy
mistress-to-be:
Hakamonaki If we waste tonight

Yume o dani mide In wakefulness, dreaming no dream
Akashite wa Though but a moment long,
Nani o ka nochi no What night-tales shall we have
Yogatari ni semu To tell in times to come?
The lady gives him a discouraging reply, alluding to her grief for her
recently deceased lover, who as it happened was the Prince's brother:
Yo to tomo ni Though with the night

Nuru to wa sode o I sink in waves of sleep, my sleeves
Omou mi mo Alone are drenched,
Nodoka ni yume o As plunged in tearful thoughts
Miru yoi zo naki I find no eve of tranquil dreams.
"Especially not the kind of dream you mean," she adds.12

A final dream poem forms a connecting filament with the story
quoted at the beginning of this article. The eighth-century poetess
12 Cranston, Izumi Shikibu Diary, pp. 134-135.

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Lady Otomo of Sakanoue -k*&

daughter during a temporary separation:
MYS IV:724
Asakami no Morning-hair-tangled,
Omoimidarete Thoughts distracted with your love,
Kaku bakari Your yearning for me
Nane ga koure so Has been so strong, sweet child,
Ime ni miekeru That you have come to me in dreams.
Midaru 01 ; (here in omoimidarete, "thoughts in a tangle") is, along

with madou ("to go astray"), one of the key words in Japanese love
poetry. Midaru is a verb meaning "to be disordered," "to fall into a
tangle." Referring to emotion or conduct it means "wild" or "law-
less" and implies rebellion against proper order. It is used regularly in
poetry for the anarchy of the ungovernable heart. Both poems in the
anecdote about the young man and the two sisters at Kasuga employ
the word. Shinobu no midare M.K0141, "the turmoil of desire," is
what "has no limits." This turmoil is likened to the wild, haphazard
pattern of Shinobu AlJ5 cloth, a fabric printed, some say, with im-
pressions of the plant shiinobu i0 (or shinobugusa Fw=-), a kind of
moss fern.'3 "Because of whom did I fall into distraction?" asks the
second poem, and the verb means "to fall in love." The Kokinwakashii
opens its five books of love poems with an elegantly punning verse
based on the same concept of love, though employing a different
phraseology. Ayame mo shiranu & !Z L t!P Va means "knowing no
pattern"; ayamegusa -A? is sweet flag.
KKS XI:469 Anon.
Hototogisu In the month of June
Naku ya satsuki no When the little cuckoo cries,
Ayamegusa Sweet-flag everywhere:
Ayame mo shiranu Oh sweet tangle of my love
Koi mo suru kana That knows no weave or pattern!
In these poems tangled vegetation often serves as the natural ana-

logue of the lover's emotion:
KKS XI:485 Anon.

Karigomo no Like scattered rushes
Omoimidarete The wild tangle of my love -
Ware kou to Can she ever know
13 For a discussion of this point, see McCullough, Tales of Ise, p

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THE DARK PATH 77
Imo shirurame ya This yearning unless someone goes

Hito shi tsugezu wa To tell of my disordered heart?
KKS XI:532 Anon.

Okihe ni mo Gemweed on the waves,
Yoranu tamamo no Washing neither out to sea
Nami no ue ni Nor in to shore:
Midarete nomi ya Floating all a-tangle in the tide,
Koiwatarinamu Will my love drift on across the years?
KKS XII:583 Ki no Tsurayuki

Aki no no ni On autumn fields
Midarete sakeru The tangled flowers bloom, profuse
Hana no iro no In a thousand hues -
Chigusa ni mono o As many as the thoughts of love
Omou koro kana That choke my burdened heart.
ISZ 941 Izumi Shikibul4
Wa ga kokoro Even though my heart
Natsu no nobe ni mo Is not a summer grassland,
Aranaku ni It lies thickly choked
Shigeku mo koi no With a tangle of rife love
Narimasaru kana That grows and grows forever.
The image of a cord, either as something which will bind together

the chaos of emotion, or as something which itself may tangle or
break, is sometimes employed. Tama no o means "string of jewels"
3kE C, but also "ethread of the soul" ACAX. Its snapping could
imply either lapse into uncontrolled emotion, or death.
KKS XI:5o2 Anon.

Aware cho Love's sadness often
Koto dani naku wa Calls from me a long-drawn sigh;
Nani o ka wa Else what would I have
Koi no midare no As cord to bind into one sheaf
Tsukaneo ni semu The wild disorder of my heart?
MYS XI:2365 Anon.
Uchihi sasu For another's wife
Miyaji ni aishi Met on the highroad leading
Hitozuma yue ni To the sun-bright capital,
Tama no o no Like a string ofjewels
Omoimidarete My cord of life is tangled
Nuru yo shi so oki With desire and sleepless nights.
14 The numbering of poems from Izumni Shikibu zokushii |11 AA is that in Kub
Utsubo, ed., Izumi Shikibu shiu Ono no Komachi shu7 (Asahi shimbunsha, 1958).

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MYS xII:3o81 Anon.

Tama no o o When a string of jewels
Katao ni yorite Is twisted from a single strand
0 o yowami It has no strength:
Midaruru toki ni What can I do but yearn for you
Koizu arame ya mo When weakness brings disordered thoughts?
In the following poem it is the discordant cries of cranes that serve

as the metaphor for the inner state of the poet:
KKS XI:514 Anon.

Wasuraruru The hour wherein
Toki shi nakereba Forgetfulness of him might come
Ashitazu no Will never be,
Omoimidarete And I can only weep for tangled love,
Ne o nomi zo naku Clamorous as the cranes among the reeds.
But the most striking objective analogue of the internal turmoil of

love is the image of tangled hair (midaregami NLW ). Japanese
poetry is notable for the restraint with which it deals with the physical
aspects of love. Its interest is mostly in states of feeling, degrees of
anguish or longing or despair, and the erotic descriptions of the mani-
fold charms of the female body which are the chief attraction of San-
skrit amatory verse are virtually absent. The one physical attribute that
is mentioned again and again is the woman's long, black hair. Women
of the Heian aristocracy were proud of wearing their hair to the floor,
and though customs were different in the Man'yo period, the image is
even more prominent in its poetry. Against the general diffidence in
matters of sexual detail, the image of the sinuous and glistening hair
stands out as a powerful voluptuous symbol. The tangle of a woman's
morning hair may serve as a metaphor for her inner state of distracted
yearning, as in the poem by Lady Otomo to her daughter quoted
above. It also often implies the abandon of a night of love:
MYS XI :2578 Anon.

Asanegami Tangled though it be
Ware wa kezuraji With morning sleep, I shall not
Utsukushiki Comb this hair you touched,
Kimi ga tamakura My precious one, when I lay
Fureteshi mono o All night on your pillowing arm.
In the Man'yo period loosely flowing hair was associated with yo

girls, the hair being tied up when they reached adulthood. Ther

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THE DARK PATH 79
several poems in which a lover remembers the loose-haired girl he used

to know. The hair seems symbolic of the relationships:
MYS XVI:3822 Anon.

Tachibana no She whose hair hung loose
Tera no nagaya ni When I led her to the longhouse
Wa ga ineshi And slept with her there
Unaihanari wa At the Temple of the Orange Tree -
Kami agetsuramu ka Has she now bound up her locks?
MYS XI:2,540 Anon.

Furiwake no She whose hair was short,
Kami o mijikami Hanging loose to either side,
Aokusa o Who perhaps now binds
Kami ni takuramu Green grasses to lengthen it -
Imo o shi so omou How I do long for that girl!
The following is an exchange between a couple parted by illness:

MYS 11:12.3 Mikata no Sami J?
Takeba nure Tied up they came loose,
Takaneba nagaki When not tied they were too long;
Imo ga kami My dear girl's tresses
Kono koro minu ni All this time I have not seen -
Kakiretsuramu ka Has she combed them into place?
MYS 11:1224 Daughter of Sono no Omi Ikuha Nj4LT M *

Hito mina wa Everybody says
Ima wa nagashi to My hair is getting long now -
Take to iedo Bind it up, they say;
Kimi ga mishi kami But this hair you looked upon,
Midaretari to mo I'll leave it, though in tangles.
As shown in two of the poems above, uncombed hair may serve as

an emblem of fidelity. When the youthful, gleaming black of the hair
turns white the idea of fidelity is even more powerfully expressed. The
following poem is attributed to the fourth-century Empress Iwano-
hime 00JR , one of four in which she expresses her yearning for
her husband the Emperor:
MYS II:87
Aritsutsu mo Here shall I abide
Kimi o ba matamu And wait the coming of my lord,
Uchinabiku Until the streaming
Wa ga kurokami ni Banner of my long black hair
Shimo no oku made ni Is stiff and white with frost.
The frost in this poem can be taken either literally or metaphorically.

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Another Man'yo poem inspired by a similar situation uses curiously

similar imagery. This time the husband has finally returned, and the
waiting wife speaks of his hair. The snow is supposedly to be taken
literally in this case:
MYSXVI:38o5 Anon.
Nubatama no Have you come to me
Kurokami nurete Through the fluffy falling snow,
Awayuki no Wetting your black hair
Furu ni ya kimasu That gleams as soft as beads of jet,
Kokoda koureba For my immeasurable love?
The following poem, written on the occasion of a heavy snowfall,

expresses a minister's loyalty to his lord:
MYS XVII:3922 Minister of the Left Tachibana no Moroe kTC 5

(684-757)
Furu yuki no Until falling snow
Shirokami made ni Is no whiter than my hair
Mkimi ni In loyal service
Tsukaematsureba I have waited on my lord,
Totoku mo aru ka And my heart is filled with awe.
Many Man'yo poems could be cited to show that white hairs do not
always bring honor. The following, "by a young maiden sent in reply
to Saeki no Sukune Akamaro t1tJiMi#r%L8," is lighter in ton
than most:
MYS Iv:627
Wa ga tamoto If you wish to rest
Makamu to omowamu Your head upon this arm of mine,
Masurao wa 0 my good stalwart,
Ochimizu motome Seek first the waters of replenished youth
Shiraka oinitari For the white hairs growing on your brow.
An unusual evocation of the sinuous beauty of black -hair is pro-

vided by Hitomaro's poem on a young girl's suicide:
MYS 111:430
Yakumo sasu The girl from Izumo,
Izumo no kora ga Land of ever-streaming clouds,
Kurokami wa Her long black tresses
Yoshino no kawa no Eddy in the current far
Oki ni nazusau From Yoshino River's shore.
From all of the above it is clear that the hair image is associated

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THE DARK PATH 81
with the pain of waiting and separation. Love in separation is love at

its most affecting to the Japanese, who find melancholy more poetic
than enjoyment. The loneliness of the woman left behind is made
more poignant by reference to her hair, the long hair in which both
lovers take pleasure:
MYS IV:493 Tanabe no Imiki Ichihiko B AjE , fT- (late seventh

century)
Okite yukaba How my love will pine
Imo koimu kamo If I leave her when I go,
Shikitae no Spreading her black hair
Kurokami shikite Like a bedspread of fine cloth,
Nagaki kono yo o Alone these long autumn nights.
Otomo no Yakamochi (716-785) wrote these lines in separa-

tion from his wife:
MYS XVIII:4101
Tsuma no mikoto no My most honored wife, who since

Koromode no I parted from her sleeves
10 Wakareshi toki yo And came away into this place
Nubatama no Has lain alone,
Yodoko katasari Her bed half-empty in the jet-black night,
Asanegami Who does not touch a comb
Kaki mo kezurazu To the tangles of her morning hair,
15 Idete koshi But must be sighing
Tsukihi yomitsutsu As she counts the months and days
As in MYS 124 and 2578, the woman leaves her hair uncombed. Here,
however, the reason is not so much that the man is used to it that way
as that the woman feels too downhearted to do anything about herself
-after all, who will see her?
Probably the most famous of all tangled-hair poems is one by the
Heian poetess Izumi Shikibu. It is no doubt the best-known amorous
poem of this highly amorous woman. Here the tangle of the hair
clearly is emblematic of the inner tangle of the lady's emotions:
ISS 86
Kurogami no I fling myself down,
Midare mo shirazu Heedless of the wild disorder
Uchifuseba Of my long black hair,
Mazu kakiyarishi And soon I'm yearning once again
Hito zo koishiki For him who used to stroke it smooth.

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What ails all these ladies with their dreams and their tangled hair
is that they suffer from the discomfort of the lonely bed. There is one
strand of the fabric of Japanese love poetry which can be labeled "the
tradition of the passionate poetess." In these poems the woman speaks
openly of her desire for her lover, telling of her loneliness, how cold
she is in bed alone, or simply saying, "Please sleep with me." The
Man'yoshui abounds in poems whose charm lies in their directness. The
following two, both anonymous, are examples:
MYS XII :3079
Watatsumi no As the gemweed drifts
Oki tsu tamamo no In the offing of the mighty deep,
Nabikinemu So let us drift in sleep:
Haya kimase kimi Come to me quickly, 0 my love,
Mataba kurushi mo For I must suffer if you make me wait.
MYS XI:2782
Sanu gani wa If it is but sleep,
Tare to mo nemedo Why, I can sleep with anyone;
Oki tsu mo no But it is you, my love,
Nabikishi kimi ga Who drifted with me like seaweed
Koto matsu ware o Of the offing, for whose word I wait.
Izumi Shikibu, who has many poems in this vein, also makes her
preferences clear:
SKS VIII:253
Take no ha ni Nights when hail falls,
Arare furu yo wa Pattering incessantly
Sarasara ni On rustling bamboo leaves,
Hitori wa nubeki I swear I cannot find
Kokochi koso sene The heart to sleep alone.
The atmospherics of this poem link it to a large number of others.

When the weather is bad, the desire for a bedmate increases. The cold
of night makes the woman's loneliness seem more pathetic; one also
realizes that the simple desire to keep warm is part of the inspiration.
The following, though written by the Priest Sosei, is in the genre of
the lonely woman:
KKS xII:555
Akikaze no When the autumn wind
Mi ni samukereba Touches cold against my flesh
Tsuremonaki One heartless man
Hito o zo tanomu Is all the hope I have for warmth,
Kururu yogoto ni Night after night as darkness falls.

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THE DARK PATH 83
The coldness of the half-empty bed is expressed in similar terms in

the next two poems:
KKS xII:563 Ki no Tomonori zA1J (early tenth century)

Sasa no ha ni Sharper than the frost
Oku shimo yori mo That forms on leaves of bamboo grass
Hitori nuru These clear, crisp nights
Wa ga koromode zo Is the cold that penetrates
Saemasarikeru My sleeves when I sleep alone.
Neya no ue ni Over my chamber
Shimo ya okuramu Frost must now be gathering,
Katashikeru For from underneath
Shita koso itaku This robe spread out without a mate
Saenoboru nare There mounts a penetrating cold.
Lovers are described as pillowing on each other's arms, a conven-

tion which lies behind the plight of the woman in such a poem as this:
Seko ga kode On these cold nights
Fushishi katawara When my lover does not come,
Samuki yo wa In my chilly bed
Wa ga tamakura o It is I myself whose arm
Ware zo shite nuru Must serve as pillow for my sleep.
The seasons too have their effect on the poets' sensibilities. The
autumn wind is cold, and it may bring memories of the past:
MYS X:2301 Anon.
Yoshieyashi Let him go then,
Koiji to suredo I'll long no more, I said;
Akikaze no Yet when the autumn wind
Samuku fuku yo wa Blows cold at night the old thoughts come,
Kimi o shi so omou And I am yearning for you once again.
Autumn is also the season when mating deer bleat in the hills, and
their cries belong to the select list of natural sounds treated as moving
in classical poetry. The cry of the deer expresses its longing for a mate,
and the sound arouses similar feelings in the listener.
KKS xii :582 Anon.
Aki nareba Now it is autumn,
Yama toyomu made And the belling deer call out
Naku shika ni Till the hills resound -
Ware otorame ya Do I cry from smaller need
Hitori nuru yo wa The nights I sleep alone?

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The night-singing bird of summer, the small cuckoo called hototo-

gisu, is also associated with the pangs of love:

Matanedo mo Waiting or not,
Mono omou hito wa She who lies in lonely thought
Onozukara Must wake the night
Yamahototogisu And be the first of all to hear
Mazu zo kikitsuru The mountain cuckoo's call.
Evening, the hour when the lover will come, if indeed he is going
to, is laden with a special emotion, as expressed in this punning poem:
KKS xi :515 Anon.
Karagoromo When the day draws on
Hi mo yngure ni To evening (so too are drawn
Naru toki wa The strings of courtly robes),
Kaesugaesu zo The longing that I feel for him
Hito wa koishiki Covers me more deeply in its folds.
The mood of autumn and the mood of evening intensify each other
to create the ultimate in poignant expectation:
KKS XI:546 Anon.

Itsu tote mo No matter when,
Koishikarazu wa There is no moment, day, or year
Aranedo mo Not filled with longing,
Aki no yabe wa But on autumn evenings
Ayashikarikeri Love grows strangely more intense.
Dawn also has its poignancy. It is the hour of the lover's departure,
and there is a whole genre of poems in which the woman tries to con-
vince her lover that the time to part has not really arrived. The fol-
lowing is a typical example:
SKKS xIII:1 182 Fujiwara no Koreshige 4f)A (953-989)

Shibashi mate Wait just a little!
Mada yo wa fukashi The night has far to go;
Nagatsuki no It is the light
Ariake no tsuki wa Of long October's waning moon
Hito madou nari That leads you so astray.
Another of the lonely sounds of night is the fulling mallet beating

cloth. Here Izumi Shikibu imagines a peasant woman up late at night,
fulling cloth while she waits for a lover. The sound awakens the
poetess to a realization that she too is alone:

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THE DARK PATH 85
ISS 46
Satobito no There in the village
Koromo utsu naru Some woman must be waiting,
Tsuchi no oto ni For across the night
Ayanaku ware mo Comes the sound of mallet upon cloth -
Nezamenuru kana And my own sleep is shattered to no end.
In another poem Izumi is awake, brooding all night by the fire in

her brazier:
ISS 69
Nuru hito o These buried coals
Okosu to mo naki Give off too faint a glow to waken
Uzumibi o Anyone asleep,
Mitsutsu hakanaku But I stare into their sunken flames
Akasu yona yona Night after empty night until the dawn.
The restless tension of such nocturnal vigils is well expressed in

this intricately punning poem by Ki no Tsurayuki:
KKS xii:6o5
Te mo furede Hands have not touched,
Tsukihi henikeru Months and days gone by, white
Shiramayumi Spindle-tree bow:
Okifushi yoru wa Drawn taut I quiver in the night,
I koso nerarene Rising, sinking, far from sleep.
To be unable to sleep is a sign of the intensity of one's desire and

longing, and the farther from sleep the truer the love felt. Thus lovers
made a point of protesting their insomnia to each other. The following
exchange is taken from Izumi Shikibu nikki. Prince Atsumichi writes
first:
Fuyu no yo no All the winter's night,
Koishiki koto ni My eyes wide open, longing
Me mo awade For my love, I lay,
Koromo katashiki My cloak spread out without a mate,
Ake zo shinikeru Alone until the dawn.
But Izumi proves her greater suffering by adding the conceit of frozen
tears to her sleeplessness:
Fuyu no yo no All that winter's night
Me sae k6ri ni My eyes indeed were closed-
Tojirarete But closed with ice!
Akashigataki o While I wore out the darkness
Akashitsuru kana To the laggard dawn.15
15 Cranston, Izumi Shikibu Diary, p. i86.

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The melancholy which attaches to the conventions of Japanese love

poetry will be apparent enough from most of the preceding verses. It
may be interesting to take a look at a poem which has a few lines on
the joys and excitement of love, and then notice how the poet imme-
diately cancels them out by stating the fate awaiting such young lovers.
The poet is Yamanoue no Okura Lth?1Et (ca. 66o - ca. 733), whose
grand theme is the human condition, and his poem is one which ac-
cording to its headnote he wrote "to banish regrets for the two colors
of hair" (black and white, emblematic of youth and age).
MYS v:804
Otomera ga The youths push open

40 Sanasu itato o Wooden doors to where the maidens lie
Oshihiraki In waiting sleep;
Itadoriyorite Slowly they grope closer in the dark,
Matamade no Till jewellike arms outstretched
Tamade sashikae Meet precious arms in mutual embrace;
45 Sa neshi yo wa But the nights are few
Ikuda mo araneba Young lovers sleep in such delight.
Tatsukazue Soon their hands will clutch
Koshi ni taganete A cane pressed close to their tottering hips;
The desolation of age, which robs youth of its joys, has as its
counterpart in the poetry of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro the desolation
of untimely death, which cuts off youth in its full flower. We have
already seen the concluding lines of Hitomaro's lament on the death
of Prince Kawashima. The first part of the poem gives a sensitive
description of the aching loss experienced by the young wife whose
husband has died. As in the love poems the description is in terms of
the half-empty bed. Through careful use of imagery the poet is able
to render the intimate life of the couple in such a way as to make the
loss deeply affecting.'6
MYS II:194
Tobu tori no In the River of Asuka,
Asuka no kawa no Asuka of the flying bird,
Kami tsu se ni The gemweed growing
Ouru tamamo wa Along the upper shallows,
16 For an analysis of some of the imagery, see Edwin A. Cranston, "Water-Plant

Imagery in the Man'yshui," HJAS 31(1971).153, 154.

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THE DARK PATH 87
5 Shimo tsu se ni Swaying and touching,

Nagarefurabau Trails with the current toward the
shallows below:
Tamamo nasu Like the gemweed too,
Ka yori kaku yori Bending to his love and he to yours,
Nabikaishi Softly interlaced
lo Tsuma no mikoto no You lay with him who was
Tatanazuku Your princely husband,
Nikihada sura o But now must sleep alone
Tsurugitachi Without one touch
Mi ni soeneneba Of his fine and tender skin
15 Nubatama no That used to cling to you
Yodoko mo aruramu Close as a warrior's long, straight sword,
Soko yue ni So that in the night,
Nagusamekanete The night as dark as beads of jet,
Kedashiku mo Your bed must be desolate;
Tears of grief and tears of longing are freely described in Japanese,

surely one of the world's most well-watered literatures. Here restraint
gives way to hyperbole. Tears in classical poetry are likened to rain,
dewdrops, pearls, blood, dye, ink, rivers, clouds, cataracts, harbors,
oceans; they boil, they freeze, they reflect the moon. The very ex-
travagance of the metaphors sometimes imparts a paradoxical exu-
berance to evocations of grief and pain.
Dewdrops offered an obvious metaphor for tears to the Japanese.
Sometimes the two are simply associated with each other, as in this
poem by Fujiwara Teika 19 (1162-1241), written "when, in the
autumn of the year his mother passed away, he went back to her old
home on a day of violent wind":
SKKS VIII:788
Tamayura no Faint as the whisper
TIsuyu mo namida mo Of the swaying beads, these drops
Todomarazu Of dew and tears yet fall:
Nakibito kouru Here where I yearn for one who is no more,
Yado no akikaze This house is shaken by the autumn wind.
A poem by Izumi Shikibu associates tears and dew in an artfully

suggestive manner. The headnote reads: "One day when dew formed
on the very charming hagi A [bush clover] in front of the place where,
reluctant to face her parents, she was living in concealment." Her
reluctance, it may be noted, was probably the result of a clandestine

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love affair. In the poem the lady manages to break a spray of hagi
without spilling a dewdrop, but the internal "breaking" brlngs a dif-
ferent dew from her eyes.
ISZ 1312
Sa wa miredo I could see the branch
Uchi mo harawade Was laden, but I brushed no drop
Akihagi o From the autumn hagi;
Shinobite oreba It was a secret breaking brought
Sode zo tsuyukeki These showers to dew my sleeves.
There was also a conceit that dewdrops were the tears shed by wild
geese, who migrate north from Japan just when the cherry blossoms
come out in spring:
ShokuKKS I:85 Fujiwara no Yoshitsune AJY3 (1169-1206)

Ima wa tote Now the time has come,
Yama tobikoyuru The wild geese fly off crying
Karigane no Across the mountains,
Namida tsuyukeki And here below the blossoms shine
Hana no ue kana With the dewdrops of their tears.
A similar poem links tears to rain:
KKS II:88 Otomo no Kuronushi zkCMt (ninth century)

Harusame no Are the rains of spring
Furu wa namida ka Teardrops falling from the sky?
Sakurabana Even among men
Chiru o oshimanu There is none but feels regret
Hito shi nakereba When cherry blossoms scatter.
Abe no Kiyoyuki [AliT, writing to Ono no Komachi, protest

that his tears are pearls:
KKS xii:556
Tsutsumedo mo Wrap them though one may,
Sode ni tamaranu Sleeves cannot contain them -
Shiratama wa These glistening pearls
Hito o minu me no Are teardrops from the eyes of him
Namida narikeri Who cannot see the one he loves.
But Komachi in her-reply dismisses the metaphor as trivial:

KKS XI1:557
Oroka naru Shallow tears are they
Namida zo sode ni That falling on a person's sleeves
Tama wa nasu Form in little beads;
Ware wa sekiaezu I cannot even dam the flood,
Tagitsu se nareba For mine are a gushing stream.

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THE DARK PATH 89
In the extremity of his pain the lover crimsons his sleeves with
tears of blood:

Shiratama to Even these bright tears
Mieshi namida mo That once looked white as gleaming pearls
Toshi fureba With the passing years
Karakurenai ni Have altered to the crimson hue
Utsuroinikeri Of fine Korean dye.
KKS xII:598 Ki no Tsurayuki
Kurenai no When the crimson comes
Furiidetsutsu naku Not from sprinkled dye, but tears
Namida ni wa Shed in loud lament,
Tamoto nomi koso It is only the garment's sleeves
Iro masarikere That deepen in their color.
The sleeves of course are used to wipe away the tears, and they vary
from damp to soggy throughout much of courtly literature.
KKS XII:576 Fujiwara no Tadafusa rPM (d. 929)

Itsuwari no If these were merely
Namida nariseba Lying tears I shed for you,
Karakoromo I should not turn aside
Shinobi ni sode wa And secretly wring out the sleeves
Shiborazaramashi Of my courtly cloak and gown.
KKS XII:577 _e no Chisato kif:f (active late ninth century)

Ne ni nakite Though I have wept aloud
Hijinishikado mo Until my sleeves are drenched with tears,
Harusame ni "This dampness came
Nurenishi sode to From a wetting in the rains of spring,"
Towaba kotaemu I shall reply, should any ask.
In Utsubo monogatari 4* ffip (The Tale of the Hollow T

extravagantly romantic tale of the tenth century, Nakayori lM
Minamoto Lieutenant itJ, one of sixteen unsuccessful suitors for
the hand of Atemiya tb -C 'g, the daughter of General Masayori )kf%
1EV, abandons the world to become a Buddhist monk when Atemiya
marries the Crown Prince. Later he sends her a poem from his her-
mitage, referring to the crimson sleeves of agonized love, and to his
present monkish habit of sober black:
Kurenai no My crimson sleeves

Sode zo katami to I thought would surely be
Om6eshi My love's last relic -

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Ima wa kuroku mo And do I now weep tears

Somaru namida ka That stain them black?"7
When tears fall upon the sleeves and the moon is reflected in them,
the moon is said to "lodge" (yadoru M Z) on the sleeves. In a poem
by the Heian poetess Lady Ise 'PON (ca. 877 - ca. 940) the reflected
moon seems also to have a tear-stained face:
KKS xv:756
Ai ni aite How well we agree
Mono omou koro no When I am plunged in lonely thought
Wa ga sode ni The very moon
Yadoru tsuki sae That lodges on my sleeves looks wet,
Nururu gao naru As if its face were stained with tears.
The poet often compares himself to some bird, animal, or insect

which emits cries. In Japanese as in English the same verb implies
both the sound and the weeping.
KKS XII:578 Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

Wa ga gotoku Like me, 0 cuckoo,
Mono ya kanashiki Are you sad for all the things
Hototogisu That wound the heart?
Toki zo to mo naku I hear you crying in the night
Yo tada nakuramu In timeless sorrow until dawn.
KKS XII:581 Kiyohara no Fukayabu i8Afl2 (late ninth - early
tenth centuries)
Mushi no goto Though unlike an insect
Koe ni tatete wa I do not raise my voice aloud
Nakanedo mo When I cry in pain,
Namida nomi koso The tears flow down, you may be sure,
Shita ni nagarure Beneath the surface of my heart.
Yugei no Myobu UA16WO, the Emperor's messenger in Genji

monogatari fl4J' (The Tale of Genji), the famous early eleventh
century novel by Murasaki Shikibu MAN, expresses her grief ov
the death of Genji's mother, Kiritsubo brl. She visits the boy's
grandmother at night in a house where bell-crickets (suzumushi k
shrill loudly in the wild, overgrown garden:
Suzumushi no Though the bell-cricket
Koe no kagiri o WVrings the last limits of its
17 The quotations from Utsubo monogatari are from a passage translated in Edwin A
Cranston, "Atemiya, A Translation from the Utsubo monogatari," MN 24.3(1969) .289-
314. There is no complete translation of Utsubo monogatari.

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THE DARK PATH 91
Tsukushite mo Voice in grief,

Nagaki yo akazu Through the long night unassuaged
Furu namida kana My falling tears can find no end."8
Tears may rise into the sky to form clouds or mist:
KKS XII :585 Kiyohara no Fukayabu

Hito o omou Though a heart in love
Kokoro wa kari ni Is not a wild goose on the wing,
Aranedo mo How I cry and cross
Kumoi ni nomi mo The enormous sky of longing
Nakiwataru kana Through the cloudbanks of my tears.
Or the mist may reside in the eyes:
SKKS XVI:1548 Gyohen hIfj (1181-1264?)

Ayashiku zo How strange it was!
Kaesa wa tsuki no The moon along my homeward way
Kumorinishi Was veiled in clouds;
Mukashigatari ni Can I have talked so deep into the night
Yo ya fukenikemu Of things that happened long ago?
The river of tears (namidagawa WI1l) is one of the best-establish

conceits in classical poetry. We have seen several examples already.
No tranquil stream, it is a raging torrent:
SKKS XI :991 Anon.

Oto ni nomi By report alone
Ari to kikikoshi Had I heard there was a place
Miyoshino no Known as Yoshino,
Taki wa kyo koso Yet today its cataract
Sode ni ochikere Plunges here upon my sleeves.
Its inner heat keeps it from freezing even in the depths of win

Yo to tomo ni As the years go by
Nagarete zo yuku Together flows an endless stream,
Namidagawa This river of tears,
Fuyu mo koranu And even in the winter cold
Minawa narikeri Its foaming current does not freeze.
In the extravagant agonies of the heroes of Utsubo it may even be a

boiling river of blood. Nakazumi {+IR, the incestuously inclined
18 For the passage as translated by Arthur Waley, see The Tale of Genji (Modern
Library, 196o), p. 12.

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brother of Atemiya, at one point in his illicit passion unburdens him-

self of this:
Fushimarobi Tossing in stricken

Karakurenai ni Agony, I weep a flood
Nakinagasu Of tears dark crimson,
Namida no kawa ni A surging river, seething
Tagiru mune no hi With the fires in my breast.
Other bodies of water also enter into the metaphorical exuberance.

Sleeves may house a harbor, pillows conceal an ocean. In episode 26
of The Tales of Ise the anonymous hero finds himself commiserated
with on an unsuccessful love affair. The letter of sympathy arouses
too much emotion:
Omoezu Much to my surprise
Sode ni minato no I find a storm-lashed harbor
Sawagu kana Raging on my sleeves,
Morokoshibune no All because there comes to port
Yorishi bakari ni This China boat across the sea.
An allusive variation on this by Princess Shokushi 5;flIIiT_ (d.

1201) combines the conceit of the harbor on the sleeves with that of
the lodging moon:
ShokuGSS XII:727
Kage narete How familiar to
Yadoru tsuki kana These waters has its light become,
Hito shirezu The moon that lodges
Yoru yoru sawagu Where unknown to men a harbor
Sode no minato ni Nightly rages on my sleeves!
The following poem contains a pun on miru me AL 1X ("ey

see" the beloved) / mirume 1i4 &- ("sea-pine," a kind of water p
KKS XII :595 Ki no Tomonori
Shikitae no Although underneath
Makura no shita ni My pillow of fine barken cloth
Umi wa aredo An ocean lies,
Hito o miru me wa In its water grow no beds
Oizu zo arikeru Of sea-pine for the one I love.
Ultimately the whole bed is flooded, and the sufferer becomes a

channel-marker (miotsukushi Xif.) in the harbor of tears:
KKS XII :567 Fujiwara no Okikaze
Kimi kouru Tears of longing

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THE DARK PATH 93
Namida no toko ni For you flood my bed until

Michikureba It can hold no more:
Miotsukushi to zo My strength is spent, I have become
Ware wa narikeru A depth-gauge in the tides of woe.
Obviously the modes of unhappiness in love have about them a

baroque intoxication with hyperbole. This extravagance implies in-
tensity of feeling, an intensity which comes partially from efforts to
keep emotions hidden. Many poems deal with secret- love-with de-
sires not revealed even to their object. The following poem contains
an untranslatable pun on iwatsutsuji Xlz W ("'wild azalea") / iwaneba
> 13;bW ("when one does not speak"):
KKS XI:495 Anon.

Omoiizuru Memories revive
Tokiwa no yama no As on evergreen mountains
Iwatsutsuji Wild azalea flares:
Iwaneba koso are Unspoken love burns stronger
Koishiki mono o For the silence where it dwells.
The determination not to reveal one's feelings is characteristic of

early stages in the development of passion:
KKS XI :494 Anon.

Yama takami So high the mountain
Shita yuku mizu no Water plummets down its flanks:
Shita ni nomi Down forever
Nagarete koimu In the secret depths I'll love,
Koi wa shinu to mo Though love should be the death of me.
Rice and other plants which come into ear or tassel serve as a
common metaphor for the revelation of love:
KKS XI:547 Anon.

Aki no ta no I do not love him
Ho ni koso hito o Openly as autumn fields
Koizarame Flaunt their rice in ear,
Nado ka kokoro ni But how shall I ever, come what may,
Wasure shimo semu Forget him in my heart?
Other poems take a bolder stance:
KKS XI:549 Anon.

Hitome moru Guarding against eyes
Ware ka wa aya na Of others? I? What foolishness!
Hanasusuki How should I live

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Nado ka ho ni idete And not show my love as plain

Koizu shimo aramu As plumegrass all in tassel?
The image of a frozen stream is an effective one for concealed love:
KKS XII:591 Muneoka no Oyori v (d. 906)

Fuyukawa no A winter streamlet,
Ue wa k6reru Frozen on the surface-is it
Ware nare ya Such a thing I am,
Shita ni nagarete Whose yearning flows in silent tears
Koiwataruramu Beneath a stifled love?
The waterless river serves in much the same fashion:
KKS XII:607 Ki no Tomonori

Koto ni idete Never yet in words
Iwanu bakari zo Has my love revealed itself:
Minasegawa A waterless river
Shita ni kayoite To the eyes of men, my heart
Koishiki mono o Flows toward you underneath the sands.
The closed-in intensity of hidden love also reveals itself in imagery

of fire:
KKS xI:500 Anon.
Natsu nareba The mosquito flares,
Yado ni fusuburu Sputtering, fill the house with smoke,
Kayaribi no Now that summer's here-
Itsu made wa ga mi How long must they still smoulder on,
Shitamoe o semu These fires in my stifled heart?
One of the poetic richnesses of Japanese is its large repertory of

literary puns. In love poems the fire image is often buried in the words
omohi ,d U and kohi N , both of which mean "yearning," "longing,"
or "loving thoughts."'9 (It should be noted that both these words for
"love" refer to the feeling one person has for another when separated.
The feeling involves suffering, and the lover wishes to rid himself of it
by coming together with its object.) The word hi A( means "fire."
Hence both omohi and kohi can and do function as "flames of love."
The following poem takes Mount Fuji, then an active volcano, as the
only suitable comparison for the poet's passion:
KKS XI:534 Anon.

Hito shirenu Smouldering unseen,
19 Both words are romanized in the poems in accordance with the modern pronuncia-
tion, in which the "h" is silent: omoi, koi.

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THE DARK PATH 95
Omoi o tsune ni These love-fires burn till only

Suruga naru Fuji in Suruga,
Fuji no yama koso Mountain aflame forever,
Wa ga mi narikere Embodies what I have become.
A poem by Sanetada I,P the Gen Saisha 11g*", one of the heart-
broken suitors in Utsubo monogatari, employs the same play on omohi:
Kaku bakari In my body, wasted

Kiyuru wa ga mi ni Thus till life must flicker out,
Toshi o hete Those fires of love
Moyuru omoi no That burned so bright of old still blaze
Taezu mo aru kana Unquenched amid the passing years.
The next poem refers to the custom of burning brine-drenched

seaweed to extract salt, an occupation of the shore-dwelling ama or
"sea folk." The rising smoke serves as a metaphor for signs which may
betray the secret "love-fires" of the poet.
SKKS xII: i i 16 Fujiwara no Hideyoshi 3ft (1 184-1240)

Moshio yaku From huts on the shore
Ama no isoya no Where sea folk burn the briny wrack
Yukeburi Smoke rises in the dusk,
Tatsu na mo kurushi As rumor rises to my hurt
Omoitaenade From these still smouldering fires of love.
The flames of a secret love are blended in the following poem with
those of the funeral pyre, whose smoke mingles with the clouds in the
traditional image. The end of love and the end of life are in view, and
both love and life are vain-they vanish without a trace.
SKKS xii:io8i Shunzei's Daughter g)J1p* (ca. 1171-1254)

Shitamoe ni These embers of desire,
Omoikienamu Now still smouldering within,
Keburi dani Must soon grow cold,
Ato naki kumo no And the end is sad when smoke from such a fire
Hate zo kanashiki Vanishes into the trackless clouds.
The images of fire are sometimes combined with the river of tears,
as the poets grasp eagerly for the paradox. We have already seen
Nakazumi's river of boiling blood. Here is a poem which introduces
the image of cormorant fishing, which is conducted at night with the
aid of torches:
KKS XI:529 Anon.

Kagaribi ni How can it be that I,

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Aranu wa ga mi no Who am no boat-torch

Nazo mo kaku Such as the fishers use,
Namida no kawa ni Yet float in flames
Ukite moyuramu Upon the river of my tears?
Another poem has the flame burning beneath the water-the

image of the reflected boat flares:
KKS XI:530 Anon.

Kagaribi no The sorrow of one
Kage to naru mi no Shadow-worn by love, a boat-torch
Wabishiki wa Blinking from the black,
Nagarete shita ni Is that the flame still burns beneath
Moyuru narikeri The never-ceasing flood of days.
In her characteristically forthright manner, Izumi Shikibu presents

the implicit paradox in clearly delineated terms:
ISS 93
Namidagawa These rivers of tears
Onaji mi yori wa Flow from the same body as
Nagaruredo My love, but never
Koi o ba ketanu Can their coursing currents quench
Mono ni zo arikeru The burning of inflamed desire.
Other poems have the tears battling the flames and winning out
over them:

Kimi kouru But for the tears
Namida shi naku wa That in longing fall for you,
Karakoromo The fine robes I wear
Mune no atari wa Would all be burning at the breast
Iro moenamashi With the color of the flames within.

Toshi o hete Though down the years
Kienu omoi wa The fire of a longing yet unquenched
Arinagara Has burnt within,
Yoru no tamoto wa These bitter nights my sleeves still turn
Nao korikeri To glittering sheets of ice.
Still another poem separates the two elements into weeping by day
and burning by night, expressed metaphorically through the activities
of the cicada and the firefly:
KKS XI :543 Anon.
Aketateba From break of day

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THE DARK PAT-H 97
Semi no orihae The long-drawn cries of the cicada

Nakikurashi Go on till dusk,
Yoru wa hotaru no And then upon the darkened air
Moe koso watare Night-long the firefly burns.
The image of the burning insect is one of the most effectively used
in the entire range of love poetry. It may be either the firefly, which
glows with its own light, or the moth or other insect fatally attracted
to the lamp flame, the ultimate image of the destructive power of love.
First, another firefly poem:

Yu sareba When evening falls,
Hotaru yori ke ni Brighter than the firefly
Moyuredo mo Is my burning:
Hikari mineba ya Can it be he does not see the glow,
Hito no tsurenaki That he should keep his cold indifference?
The firefly image is a sad one, one of lonely rejected longing. The
image of the insect which flies into the flame and dies, however, pro-
poses love as a dangerous force, fatal if not actually malevolant. In the
following poems the poets identify themselves as being in as bad case
or worse than the insect faced with the seductive flame:
KKS XI:544 Anon.

Natsumushi no When summer insects
Mi o itazura ni Waste their bodies in the flame,
Nasu koto mo It is through an urge
Hitotsu omoi ni Not other than my own desire
Yorite narikeri For burning in the fire of love.

Hito no mi mo My human body
Koi ni wa kaetsu I have given to love's flame,
Natsumushi no Burning as surely
Arawa ni moyu to As insects round a summer lamp,
Mienu bakari zo But with a fire that none can see.
KKS xii:6oo Oshikochi no Mitsune
Natsumushi o The summer insects
Nani ka iikemu Why should I have mocked at them?
Kokoro kara It is plain enough
Ware mo omoi ni How in love I too have found
Moenubera nari A fire in which to burn.
Yoi no ma mo I am more-deceived

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Hakanaku miyuru By love's dark, enticing flame

Natsumushi ni Than summer moths
Madoimasareru That vanish in the fire before
Koi mo suru kana The transient eve is done.
Release from the dark burning of worldly love is sought through

appeal to the great stiller of passions, the doctrines of the Enlightened
One. Buddhist teaching holds that passion is the root of pain and
sorrow. The world is like a burning house whose deceitful pleasures
bring only suffering. All must flee. The teachings of Buddha are like
the rain, falling upon and watering all living things. These scriptural
metaphors are incorporated into one of Izumi Shikibu's finest poems :20
ISZ 1456
Mono o nomi Distraught with worldly
Omoi no ie o Passions in this Burning House,
20 Both metaphors have their source in the Lotus Siutra. In Chapter Three a long
parable is related in which the world is likened to an old, ruinous, vermin-infested
house which suddenly catches fire. The owner of the house flees to safety, but his
children in their ignorance do not fear the flames. In order to save them their father
tempts them out with promises of playthings-goat-carts, deer-carts, and bullock-carts.
Thereupon the children eagerly rush from the burning house. They are rewarded all
with the best kind of cart-the bullock-cart. Thus Buddha tempts man to salvation with
promises, since man, preoccupied with childish and false pleasures, is too ignorant to be
aware of his peril. And the reward is the same for all-the One Vehicle of Mahayana
Buddhism. By the usual play on words Izumi Shikibu joins the image of the Burning
House (hi no ie Ak 27) ) with the word omohi, "flames of love." Chapter Five introduces
another parable, that of the plants. All plants, whatever their size or nature, derive
sustenance from the rain, which makes no distinction among them. Even so does Bud-
dhist doctrine foster all living things. The expression ichimi no ame -*j#, lit-
erally, "rain of one essence," appears in the Chinese text of the Lotus Sutra in such
passages as, "The Law taught by Buddha is like a great cloud watering men and blossoms
with rain of a single essence, so that each produces its fruit." The last line of the trans-
lation of Izumi's poem might be rendered, ". . . the One Essential Rain." For the Chinese
text of the Lotus passages see Takakusu Junjir6 -SANJk%$, ed., Taisho shinshiu
daizokyo )jEVf4Ik}Wr, ix (1925), 12-16 and 19-21. The passage quoted above
is from p. 20. The English translation by H. Kern of the Sanskrit version of the sustra
(which latter is also the basis for the Chinese translation by Kumaraj!va [344-4131 cur-
rent in Japan) is available in Saddharma-Punizarika, or The Lotus of the True Law
(Dover, 1963), a republication of vol. xxi of Sacred Books of the East (Clarendon Press,
1884). The Chinese text itself has been rendered into English by Bunno5 Kato (revised by
W. E. Soothill and Wilhelm Schiffer), AMy?ho-Renge-Kyo, The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of
the Wonderful Law (Rissho k6seikai, 1971). The corresponding passages are Kern, pp.
72-97 and 119-128; Kato, pp. 82-115 and 140-151.

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THE DARK PATH 99
Idete furu Shall I leave it now

Ichimi no ame ni And drench my flaming body
Nure ya shinamashi In the All-Embracing Rain?
The moon, eternal companion of love poetry, is also a Buddhist

symbol, that of enlightenment, and of the saving grace of the Buddha
Amida P1III, backed by the round full moon as by a halo as he
descends to welcome the soul of the believer. The moon shines down
serenely to illuminate those dark and errant paths with which we
began, again in a poem by Izumi Shikibu. The poem is a prayer, one
of great simplicity and great beauty :21
ISS 150
Kuraki yori From darkness
Kuraki michi ni zo Into the path of darkness
Irinubeki Must I enter:
Haruka ni terase Shine upon me from afar,
Yama no ha no tsuki 0 moon above the mountain crest.
ABBREVIATIONS
ISS Izumi Shikibu seishii U7%5;S2A, the "main

collection" of Izumi Shikibu's poetry.
ISZ Izumi Shikibu zokushul 1111 t , the "continued

collection" of Izumi Shikibu's poetry.
KKS Kokinwakashui I+ I , first imperially sponsored
anthology of waka poetry; commissioned in 905.
MYS Manyoshu ,T, earliest extant anthology of
Japanese poetry; last dated poem 759.
ShokuGSS Shokugosenwakashi tenth imperial
waka anthology; commissioned in 1248.
ShokuKKS Shokukokinwakashii , +4Th eleventh imperial

waka anthology; commissioned in 1259.
SKKS Shinkokinwakashu V* -SRAj, eighth imperial

waka anthology; commissioned in 12o1.
21 The first three lines of Izumi's poem are based closely on a passage from Chapter
Seven of the Lotus Siitra, describing the dark state of mortal error which prevails before
the coming of an Enlightened One: "Entering from darkness into darkness, for long
they have not heard the Buddha's name." See Takakusu, ix, RR; Kern, p. 159; Kato,
p. 170.

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SKS Slikawakaskii -Jj,fV j, sixth imperial waka

anthology; commissioned in 1144.
ZKT Zoku Kokka taikan *q j, R , a standard compendium

of private poetry collections, edited by Matsushita
Daisaburo 6 (Kadokawa shoten, 1973).
Anthologized poems are referred to by number; Roman n

volume number, Arabic to poem number in the anthology.
This article was prepared for presentation at the AAS Conference on Comparative East
Asian Literature held at Harvard University, March 29-30, 1974. Thanks are extended
to all participants and others connected with the conference, and to the organizations
whose support made it possible: the China and Inner Asia and the Northeast Asia
Regional Councils of the AAS, the University of Hawaii, and the East Asian Research
Center of Harvard University.
Of the translations in this article the following, sometimes in slightly variant versions,
have appeared in other publications of the author:
In The Izumi Shikibu Diary: A Romance of the Heian Court (Harvard University Press,
1969): "Ume wa haya," "Hakamonaki," "Yo to tomo ni," ISS 86, SKS VIII:253, "Fuyu
no yo no" (both poems), ISZ 1312, KKS XI:529, ISS 150.
In "Water-Plant Imagery in the Man'yoshfi," HJAS 31 (1971): MYS 11:194, MYS
11:131, MYS XII:3079, MYS XI:2782.
In "The Poetry of Izumi Shikibu," MN 25.1-2(1970): ISS 268, ISZ 941,ISS86, SKS
VIII:253, ISS 67, ISZ 1312, ISS 93, ISS 34, ISZ 1456, ISS 150.
In "Atemiya, A Translation from the Utsubo monogatari," MN 24.3(1969): "Kurenai
no," "Fushimarobi," "Kaku bakari."
In review of Ivan Morris, The Pillow Booh of Sei Shonagon, HJAS 29(1969): KKS
XI:534-

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The Dark Path: Images of Longing in Japanese Love Poetry

Author(s): Edwin A. Cranston

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2718791

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[This article was completed shortly before the death of my friend

Michinoku no Random-patterned cloth

The young courtier in this epi-sode from Ise monogatari I%1b

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experiences the onrush of sexual desire in terms persistent in the

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Equally dazzled by the half-real, half-dreamlike quality of their ex-

Such poems embody a quality not unlike the "elegant confusion"

Or this (MYS v:822) by Otomo no Tabito )kftMA (665-731):

Wa ga sono ni In my arbor now

Perhaps "passionate confusion" would be a better term for the equiva-

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torn in two by it. An anonymous poem, KKS XI:523, expresses the

Hito o omou Is it then because

Wa ga yado wa Pines about my house

She makes a conventional pun on matsu ("pine" e / e wait" f.)

Nevertheless, the tone more typically is serious, and reminiscent

6 CIaiko shokasha dp *t, Kochu Kokka taikei K. A k* (Kokumin

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this, a passage from MYS II:194, on the death of Prince Kawashima

20 Au ya to omoite And for this reason, inconsolable,

A poem by Ki no Tsurayuki lt;t (ca. 868 - ca. 945), KKS xii

Yasokumagoto ni At the fourscore bendings of the way

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Omoishinaete She must droop, sorrowing in her heart,

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35 Wa ga kouru And so, imagining

Akiyama no On the autumn hills

Momichiba no Now that yellow leaves

The beloved's house is situated on "the Karu Road"-the road

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lessly in the marketplace. In the first envoy the path is transposed to

Yasumishishi Our mighty lord

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Tabiyadori sesu Takes a traveler's shelter there,

Aki no no ni The travelers who take

Attachment drives the prince and his men on their wanderings-

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KKS XI:524 Anon.

Tears of longing shed during a dream of love may be likened to the

Similar sentiments appear in a poem by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

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KKS xiii:657 Ono no Komachi

KKS XII:559 Fujiwara no Toshiyuki

Komachi too has a poem in this vein:

KKS XII:569 Fujiwara no Okikaze ALJ1 (early tenth century)

KKS XI:526 Anon.

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KKS XII :575 The Priest

Nevertheless, the usual attitude is that the dream is desirable, es-

ZKT 15614 Oshikochi no Mitsune i,J;L RMt (active late ninth -

Dreams may be as good as or better than reality, either because the

KKS XII:553 Ono no Komachi

or because the reality itself has no more than a dreamlike character:

KKS xiii :647 Anon.

or simply on philosophical grounds, since Buddhism teaches that life

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Two contradictory conventions lie behind the dream poems. One is

A very similar poem was written a century earlier by the exiled

6 CIaiko shokasha dp t, Kochu Kokka taikei K. A k (Kokumin