English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Originally published:
This material was published on the Japanese website. Dates and notices in the text reflect the original publication.
This is a prose translation. Song lyrics and the explicitly metrical kabuki-style adaptation are retained in Japanese.
Romantic Songs, Special Feature (1)
Reflections on Kojo no Tsuki
May 20, 2020 (No. 1937)
Seishu Hamano
Prefatory Remarks
To speak by putting one's own heart into the heart of a song.
We will begin by writing among ourselves, but this corner belongs to the members. We launch it in the hope that readers will come forward and say, “Very well—then I will speak about this song.”
First, I shall immerse myself in the spirit of Kojo no Tsuki, which celebrates men's romantic feeling and speaks of the transience of human affairs beneath the eternal passage of light and shade, and show how I respond to this literature.
1.
春高楼の花の宴 巡る杯影差して
千代の松が枝 分け出でし
昔の光 今いずこ
It is precisely in an age of warring states that the castle keep comes alive. Moats and castle walls mark the boundary between life and death. This is quite different from an existence devoted solely to tourism. A castle might be called an eerie place, a stage for the gruesome tragedy of annihilation. It is certainly no museum of graceful aesthetics. For a warrior house, a castle is the bank of the river separating this world from the next, where the family line ends and corpses lie exposed: a place to die together with one's family. Memories of this life shine only in brief moments of good fortune. If victories continue, the domain prospers, and when spring comes there is a blossom banquet around the lord.
Now, if we recast 晩翠's poem as kabuki dialogue in alternating seven- and five-syllable rhythms, and tell the Japanese song Kojo no Tsuki in a contemporary manner, it might run as follows.
ここら辺りが車座の、飲めや歌えの黒田節。吟じて槍を小道具に、裃袴で舞う男。天下泰平と思う世も、栄枯盛衰は世の習い。いかな強者剛者とて移る御代には勝てやせぬ。それを告げるか昔日の、陽射しも去りて寄る辺なし。
平家琵琶にて弾き語る。奢れる者は久しからず。ただ春の夜の夢の如し。赤い漆器になみなみと注ぐ酒に降る陽射し。松枝わけて射しゐたる大日如来のまぶしき哉。その輝きも今は昔。真昼の果てに待つ宵は人をも身をも恨み闇…。
T. S. Eliot said in 『完全なる批評家』 that poetry is language at its most concentrated, and that is true. 土井晩翠's poem is only three lines. Yet kabuki dialogue requires twice as many characters. Is this Takeda Castle or Aoba Castle? Better not to pursue such questions. The heart of the song emerges precisely when we set it against the rise and fall of our own fortunes.
2.
秋陣営の霜の色
鳴き行く雁の数見せて
植うる剣に照り塑いし
昔の光今いずこ
Life cannot be an unbroken rise in which one is always on the offensive. Battles and raids are things one goes out to undertake. How bitter and humiliating to welcome the blade into one's own home. The end of the madness of a siege is tragic. A phrase from the Shōwa period: resolve to die in a decisive battle on the home islands. It is evidence that the situation is unfavorable, and reinforcements generally do not come. Decline? It is like closing branches and local offices until only the head-office building remains. Will that, too, eventually come under the enemy's control? To resist and refuse to let that happen is to hold out under siege.
Is there any prospect of victory in a siege? Almost none. Nor can one easily break away. Looking up, one sees wild geese passing, passing toward the southern sky. 俺もなりたやあの鳥に。 Soldiers interned in Siberia, too, stood on foreign hills and suffered intensely from loneliness, heartache and helplessness. A dead comrade was carried in, a burial mound made, and a treasured sword drawn and thrust into it in place of a Buddhist memorial tablet.
3.
いま荒城の夜半の月
変わらぬ光たがためぞ
垣に残るはただ葛
松に歌うはただ嵐
The year is Meiji 38, 1905; the place, Manchuria. The battle is over and dusk has fallen. Returning to search, one pleads inwardly: please be alive. Say something, one wishes… Yet the body is cold, and only the watch in the pocket goes on ticking. How pitiful. Such feelings come alive again in a blade that seems to have been planted. An icy blade thrust into a burial mound. Moonlight falling upon it. The sword dance in warm sunlight at that banquet in the full glory of spring.
Is that now an illusion? Even this cold moonlight will all vanish with time. The warriors in the underworld are falling cherry blossoms; those left behind are falling cherry blossoms too. The battlefield passes away, and the warriors' feelings vanish entirely. Now there is not even anyone to recall and speak of those days. Go now to a settlement village in Jilin. On bullet-scarred board fences and hedges… all that remains is kudzu.
4.
天上影は変わらねど
栄枯は移る世の姿
写さんとてか 今もなを
嗚呼荒城の夜半の月
The changes in the human world are like watching flowers bloom in rain. They quickly lose their color and wither. Yet the eternal heavens and earth remain unchanged.
People of the world: the Japanese are a people who savor such aspects of human life deeply. If you and we—if all human beings—are merely held in the embrace of the world above, など波風の立ち騒ぐらむ。
(End of No. 1937)
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.