はかなしや
Today’s post will be a little different than usual, I wanted to talk about a series of woodblock prints that I had the chance to acquire in the form of a book : the One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 月百姿［つきひゃくし］, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年). It’s a beautiful series with multiple sources of inspiration in the Japanese and Chinese litterature, history, and mythology. Every print has a second “reading” to it, a “back-story” if I can say it like that. I’m learning so, so many interesting things with these prints, things that it would have been hard to come by if I didn’t manage to get my hands on the French edition (it’s not available on the editor’s website anymore). Really expensive like you can see, but I feel like it was totally worth it. The box in itself is beautiful, and it’s 2 books inside : one with the art, and one with a translation of John Stevenson’s book.
I also found this web page that is still incomplete for the written explanations, but you can see all the art.
A lot of these prints are so elegant, sad and powerful and beautiful at the same time, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about them on this thread, especially with the presence of waka in a few of them.
Let’s start with one of the most beautiful and iconic of the series, the Moon 38.
The woman represented here is Ariko no Naishi, a handmaid at the Heian court, at the service of the empress. She was in love with a man named Tokudaji no Sanesada who unfortunately didn’t have the same feelings than her. The pain and sadness of not being loved back led Ariko to commit suicide. She’s here playing biwa and brushing off her tears before diving in the water. We can see in the square the waka she composed before her death :
はかなしや波の
no hope for me
I will just dive under the waves
maybe I will see him –
the man I love so much, from
the capital of the Moon
Notes
はかなし : forlorn, hopeless, helpless, vain.
や : this first ya is an emotional, exclamatory one.
も : I think it’s just here to put emphasis on the words before.
入りぬべし : ren’yôkei of 入る (to go into something, to enter) + shûshikei of the auxiliary verb nu which means here I think the certainty that an action will be realized + shûshikei of the auxiliary verb beshi ; it has several functions in Shirane’s Grammar, but the most logical to me is the function where it’s expressing a strong determination to do something, a firm intention.
や : this second ya is an interrogative one.
とて : from the definitions I can see here… it seems to me that the number 2 is the most logical :［動機・目的］。。。と思って ; 。。。して ; 。。。。ということで. The syntax is just a little bit weird to me (but it’s very often the case with waka…) because I feel like you would expect something after the conjunctive て. But since there is no word after this, it seems that it’s the conjunction with the actual action of jumping into the water. In Shirane’s Reader, the definition for とて is “thinking that, saying that”. So basically the way I understand it is : “after thinking that I will maybe see my lover, I will now dive into the water”.
The “capital of the Moon” is a metaphor for Heian-kyô, where Sanesada lived. It’s also a reference to a line said by one of the characters of the Heike monogatari, at the end of the story.
The calligraphy makes it very hard to read it, but fortunately there was the poem in romaji in the book (there are a few parts that I can recognise after reading the romaji, but it’s very stylised. I think this is something that you can perhaps only learn in real life, with a teacher… it feels like the “last frontier” of Japanese to me ; you are probably at the ultimate level of this language once you are at a point where you can read classical litterature effortlessly with the original calligraphy).
In the series, there are two other prints who represent this kind of suicide ; one of them is the Moon 50, who is directly talking this time about the classic tale.
We see here one of the members of the Taira (Heike) clan, Taira no Kiyotsune. The Heike monogatari relates the story of this samurai clan who was very powerful and influential for a time, before finally meeting its demise. I already posted on this thread the first lines of the text, masterfully translated by Helen McCullough ; I will just do a copy-paste from the post 79 :
祇園精舎の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響き有り。 沙羅雙樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理を顯す。 驕れる者も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢の如し。 猛き者も遂には滅びぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。
ぎおんしょうじゃのかねのこえ、しょぎょうむじょうのひびきあり。さらそうじゅのはなのいろ、じょうしゃひっすいのことわりをあらわす。おごれるものもひさしからず、ただはるのよのゆめのごとし。たけきものもついにはほろびぬ、ひとえにかぜのまえのちりにおなじ。
“The sound of the Gion Shôja bells echoes the impermanence of all things ; the color of the śâla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night ; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.”
- The Tale of the Heike, translated, with an introduction, by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1988, 504 p.
There are two yojijukugo here who perfectly resume the central theme of the story : 諸行無常 and 盛者必衰. The story of the Heike basically ends with the naval battle of Dan-no-ura, which is necessary to know for understanding the print. We see here Kiyotsune playing the flute before jumping in the water to commit a suicide of despair. On the right, you can see on the purple baneer the butterfly, emblem of his clan.
This print, the Moon 24, is taking place in the pleasure quarter of the Yoshiwara district, where a lot of cherry trees were visible in the main avenue. The woman that we see here is a courtesan ; the child is her assistant, or kamuro［禿］(it was written kamuro in my book, but the kobun dictionary says that it can also be kaburo apparently).
The title of the print, in the square, is kuruwa no tsuki ; I feel like the kanji for kuruwa［廓］is not too hard to recognise here. Interesting to see the several meanings of this word, from the walls of a castle to the closed pleasure quarters surrounded by walls too.
John Stevenson explains that there were a lot of different names for the Yoshiwara girls, and one of them was yozakura［夜桜］which is interesting to know here. Because on a first look, the Moon 24 seems like a peaceful scene : just a woman and a child being outside, under the Moon and the scattering petals. But it has a more sad and, to me, anxiety-inducing undertone when we know the meaning of the cherry blossoms. The beauty and youth of the woman is compared here to the cherry flowers, blooming only for a short time before disappearing. It immediately made me think about the waka 113 of the Kokinshû, the one of Ono no Komachi that I have already talked about in the post 46 of this thread (and guess what, the Moon 25 precisely talks about that ; it’s a depiction of Komachi in her old age).
We see here on one side the impermanence of human beauty and cherry flowers (and the transitory aspect of every event in life ; this scene only survives because of this painting) and on the other side the permanence of the Moon, eternal witness of human affairs.
We have here the Moon 44, about a poetess named Akazome Emon who wrote the waka of this print (which is by the way the 59 of the Hyakunin Isshu) :
やすらはで
without hesitating
I should have gone to sleep –
the night is so late,
I stayed awake only to see
the decline of the moon
Notes
やすらはで : mizenkei of やすらふ (which is here the meaning “to hesitate”) (は is actually pronounced wa so be careful about this) + negative de ; in Shirane’s Grammar, it’s written “negative connection”. And here we can see just after that the word doesn’t stand alone.
寝なまし : ren’yôkei of 寝［ぬ］(to sleep) + mizenkei of the auxiliary verb nu + rentaikei of the auxiliary verb mashi for expressing here a desire for an other situation, an hypothetical one in opposition to the present reality.
ものを : conjunctive particle basically meaning “but”, “though”.
さ夜 : the night.
更けて［ふけて］: ren’yôkei of 更く (to grow late, for the night) + it seems to me that this is the ren’yôkei of the auxiliary verb tsu indicating the completion of the action.
かたぶく［傾く］: to sink (for the moon).
まで : until.
She waited all night for her lover to come, only to see he didn’t.
Two things about her appearance are very characteristic of the Heian-aesthetic : the hair, very long, so long that they end up on the ground ; and the eyebrows, who are actually false ones, painted on the forehead after shaving the natural eyebrows. This practice was named 引き眉［ひきまゆ］and it was common among women but also men. The goal was to imitate the “eyebrows” of the moths. You can see that in a lot of ukiyo-e, and also on the noh masks. The blackening of the teeth was also part of this aesthetic, as strange as it may seem from today’s eyes.
Despite the deep sadness and gravitas of a lot of those prints, a few of them are also more light-hearted. There is a lot of variety in the stories and feelings evoked by the One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, which is something I really appreciate. Each one of them is unique, but they are all connected under the watch of the same cold celestial body.
Here are some other ones among my favorites.
