(mitrac I think you forgot to put your comment about the Spring post 
it’s alright though, happens to everyone)
I was thinking recently about the Moon, and her presence in Japanese poetry. Earlier in this thread I had translated a few Midaregami poems and mentioned very briefly a thesis that I had found online, written by Teppei Fukuda, about this anthology. Here is a direct quote from the abstract :
“In premodern Japan, poets had traditionally expressed their feelings through a set, limited range of classical landscapes and natural objects, which served as communal symbols Japanese poets shared across centuries. The seasons greatly occupied the attention of poets for more than a thousand years. The moon also is an important element in Japanese poetry with a set range of conventionalized poetic associations. However, by the turn of twentieth century, Yosano Akiko absorbed from the West the inspiration to express her personal feelings with her own invented moonlit landscapes, particularly ones set during spring and summer evenings. This thesis investigates what changes she made to the poetic conventions of the moon and the seasons in traditional thirty-one-syllable poetry.”
In the Chapter 1, “The Spring Moon in Tangled Hair”, we can find an interesting commentary about a super cute poem, one of the best in Midaregami in my opinion. Here is the original text with my translation, partly inspired by the one I’ve read in the thesis, with the commentary from Teppei Fukuda (what I quoted includes a brief part talking about another poem but I think it’s useful to understand what’s following). Usually I would also put my usual vocabulary/grammar notes but it happens that they are already in the commentary so, it would be a little redundant to do so.
みだれ髪 057 – 与謝野晶子
しのび足に君を
under the light pale moon
you don’t see me secretly
following you with your letters that I have
already read so heavy in
the right sleeve of my kimono
Commentary from the thesis
« […] Here is an example of a classical waka, composed by a female poet, Akazome Emon (956-1041), who lived one thousand years before Akiko.
やすらはで寝なましものをさ夜ふけてかたぶくまでの月を見しかな
(Akazome Emon, in Mostow 316)
Though I’d have preferred
to have gone off to bed
without hesitating,
the night deepened and
I watched the moon till it set!
(Mostow 316)
The female protagonist is perhaps, Akazome Emon herself. She is passively waiting for somebody under the moonlight. Regarding the romantic relationships in the Heian period, this woman’s action of waiting is something traditional in Japanese poetry, according to Sarah Strong: “a large number of women were placed in a position of waiting for their men, poems of tedium and longing were standard fare” (Strong 178). As the use of the moon in romantic longing poems in the Heian period shows, this passive action of waiting goes along with the melancholic thought, which is elicited by the moon. In other words, Heian women often waited under the moonlight for lover’s visits like in the poem above. In addition, there was a tradition that the moon should be considered to be the autumn moon unless a poem contains a word directly indicating a different season. Heian aristocratic women in waka poems were waiting for their lovers mostly under the autumn moon―a time of year when romance would fade.
The Modern Girl’s Pale Moon
Even though women in traditional waka poems usually take a position of waiting, Akiko’s female persona often act on their impulses: sometimes watching a man buying a present for his girl and thinking “that guy there is cute”; sometimes her poetic woman even chases a man she loves. For an example of the latter from Tangled Hair, Akiko’s female persona is not passively waiting for her man, instead she follows after him. In real life Akiko pursued Tekkan. The poem captures the excitement of young romance which though sometimes adventurous can be accompanied by immature hesitation. The moon here seems to inspire this young lover to go after what she wants, which would have been shocking to people living in the Meiji Period.
しのび足に君を追ひゆく薄月夜右のたもとの文がらおもき
(Yosano Akiko)
Following you
on foot stealthily
in this pale moon evening
So weighty, the letters already read
in my right sleeve.
One can see the complicated emotions of a young girl in love, such as hesitation and adventurous excitement. Together with poetic techniques such as hypermetric (ji-amari) lines Akiko’s diction amplifies this feeling, and this emotion is gently veiled and beautifully ornamented with the pale light of the moon.
Akiko’s diction often enriches the mood of the poem. In this poem, shinobi ashi (on foot stealthily) and fumigara (letters already read) are words that signal to the reader complicated and romantic feelings of the young girl in love. Shinobi ashi has a nuance that someone is following somebody sneakily, and the person following does not want the person followed to realize that he or she is following them. As he argues how Akiko’s statement of love was bold, Shinma tells the reader that even wife and husband hesitated to walk on the road together in the Meiji Period (Shinma 50). It was common for wives to walk a few steps behind men in traditional Japan. Shinobi ashi here tells us that Akiko’s girl persona desperately wants to be near the man she longs for. Fumigara means letters already read. Gara is used for something that has completed its mission, and about to be trashed and forgotten. However, here, Akiko’s poetic persona keeps fumigara in her right sleeve. Itsumi writes, “They were very important for the poet when she was young.” She adds: “The word ‘heavy’ indicates that these letters were mentally heavy for the poet” (Itsumi 66). Although readers might think that letters one can carry in one’s sleeve cannot be very heavy (omoki), Akiko’s female persona feels that the letters are heavy, not because of the physical weight, but for their psychological import. The poem’s final line gives us the sense that the letters are crucial for her in her pursuit of love.
Besides her unique choice of words, her intense emotional content is the key to interpreting all of Akiko’s poems. Her poems are usually so filled with emotion that they often exceed the limitation of beats of the tanka form (31 morae). Even though the first line of tanka usually is composed of 5 morae, the first line of this poem, shinobiashi ni has six morae. The complicated, romance-related hesitation, which is not strong enough to stop her from chasing the guy, is captured in this hypermetric line. According to Jon Holt, excessive (ji-amari) verses can be skillfully used by poets to either make the mood expansive or accentuate a passionate feeling. “These poems with excessive (ji-amari) verses have to break the bounds of thirty-one syllables because their lyric content is bursting at the seams” (Holt 343). He also mentions, “the excess beats can mimetically enhance the images of the poems, often in accentuating quantity expressions, making the mood more expansive, or accentuating a passionate feeling” (Holt 343-344). Akiko’s female persona here has a contradictory feeling of passion because on one hand she is hesitating to show her love, but on the other hand, she is tracking after him anyway. She is conflicted. One can see her complex emotions as she vacillates between hesitation and action. Akiko’s hypermetric line perfectly captures this deep complex emotion.
As mentioned earlier, Tangled Hair is a well-studied collection of tanka, and scholars widely differ on what to think of maidens that appear in the verses. Even in this poem, Itsumi Kumi contends that this poem captures the lively heart of a young girl. Sarah Strong, an American scholar, argues that Akiko’s poems changed the role of women in the waka tradition. Readers can easily imagine that sneakily chasing one’s love can create a certain type of excitement—for an immature girl or a mature woman. Along with the romantic excitement of following after a guy she loves, here, we can see an almost adventuresome feeling of hiding oneself while chasing somebody. Itsumi says, “It well captures the lively heart of a young girl. We can imagine a somehow thrilling and interesting scene.” (Itsumi 66). The girl is trying to keep her feelings inside of her as she is chasing her love. Perhaps the man realizes that she is following him, but the reader cannot really know what is going to happen. This situation gives some thrill to the verse. This thrill perhaps stimulates young girl’s passion and excitement. The girl in this poem is not just passively hiding her body and feelings from the lover, but actively chasing (oiyuku) him. In other words, she is hesitating to show that she loves him, but she physically and actively follows anyway. When one compares this with a female persona’s position of waiting in traditional waka poems mentioned by Sarah Strong, we can see that the female persona of this poem is modern.
The moon in Akiko’s poems sometimes enhances the poem with the combination of its unusual appearance and the rich emotions in the poem. The reader senses complex emotions of the protagonists and their relation to the image of the moon, here a thin, a hazy or a cherry moon as opposed to a generic moon. The pale moon night (usuzukiyo) illuminates the entire landscape of the poem and expands the romantic feeling. The moonlight emphasizes the exhilaration of the girl protagonist’s romantic feelings, as it helps her to hide from the man she is chasing. The pale moonlit night (usuzukiyo) gently illuminates the scene. The clouds or mists in the night sky blur the moonlight, and this misty pale moon gently veils Akiko’s female persona and her excitement of love. The usuzukiyo allows her to be more sneaky.
The pale moon night is somewhat ambiguous word as a seasonal word since some scholars consider it as a seasonal word of autumn, and others claim that it is a spring word. Because the moon itself is considered as a seasonal word for autumn in the waka tradition, some people argue that usuzukiyo is an autumn word. On the other hand, as mentioned above, usuzukiyo is associated with mists, which is the very thing that makes the moonlight pale. Since the misty moon (oborozukiyo) is used as a spring word from as early as The Tale of Genji (ca. 1000), some scholars categorize usuzukiyo as a seasonal word for spring. For instance, in The Names of the Moon (Tsuki no namae, 2012), a Japanese poet Takahashi Junko introduces usuzukiyo as a name of the spring moon along with other names for the moon associated with mists such as oborozuki, aburazuki, engetsu, and tangetsu (28). Considering the exhilarating mood of Akiko’s poem and the pale light helps her to secretly trail her love, it is not a mistake to take this moon as a misty spring moon. The role of the spring moon here, further amplifies the exhilarating feeling of a young girl’s romance. This use of the spring moon was something modern at the time in waka and tanka. »
– Fukuda, Teppei, “Moonlit Nights and Seasons of Romance: Yosano Akiko’s Use of the Moon in Tangled Hair” (2020). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5580.
Personal notes about my translation
As you can see it is different from the ones I usually do ; I was inspired here by the translations of Laurel Rasplica Rodd who writes them with no punctuation marks and uses blank spaces to give a rhythm.
On the first line, I could have just written “under the pale moon” but I like the rhythm it gives to have a space between “light” and “pale”. It also does a play with the word “light” ; at first we think about the noun, the light, and then it turns out to be an adjective (but at the same time it’s still a noun, for the light emitted by the moon).
There is no indication of 夜 in my translation, because I couldn’t find a solution to make it fit in an interesting way, without too many syllables. It’s in these kind of moments that you realise how concise the Japanese language can be, with just three kanji to immediately describe a scene like that. But it doesn’t matter that much, since the moon is visible it’s clearly implied that it’s the night or evening (even though I admit that it can still be visible in other moments…).
The words “you don’t see me” are a personal touch. I could have just written “I’m secretly/discreetly following you” to follow more exactly the original text. Like it is said in the thesis we don’t know if the man actually knows that the woman is following him, but from the viewpoint of the writer it seems to me that the man doesn’t know. It’s the intention at least.
We also can’t be sure about how many letters the poetess is talking about when she writes 文がら. It could be just one, or five, seven, nine… おもき is describing a mental weight, not a material one. It’s interesting to think about the little nuance it can brings in the meaning : if it’s only one letter, it surely means that they haven’t been separated for too long ; but if we are talking about a number like seven, that probably means that it has been a very long time since they haven’t seen each other. So the plural noun can be interesting in that way, since we have to make a choice anyway ; we can’t translate in English this Japanese ambiguity. I have read so far three translations of this poem and only one wrote it singular.
And like you can see there are a lot of syllables in my translation, too much maybe but I think that the rhythm is still good, I like how it sounds at least. It’s the most important for me.
For the “usual” posts and especially the seasonal ones I like to post a lot of poems at the same time with a lot of cultural content, but I think it’s also nice sometimes to do smaller posts like this one 