Ryokan’s Poems of Affection

English translation of the prose

AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Ryokan’s Poems of Love and Exchange

河内裕二, Vice President, Japan Romanticism Academia

1. Ryokan the poet

Ryokan (1758–1831) was a Zen monk of the late Edo period, and also an outstanding calligrapher, poet in Chinese, and waka poet. He never had a temple of his own, living instead in simple grass-roofed hermitages and maintaining an austere life of honorable poverty as a mendicant monk. The stories of his joining children in ball games or hide-and-seek when he met them on his begging rounds are well known.

He was born in 1758 as the eldest son of the Yamamoto family, who served as village headmen and Shinto priests in Izumozaki, Echigo, now Izumozaki Town in Santo District, Niigata Prefecture. His childhood name was Eizo, and he was an introverted, studious boy who loved reading. At thirteen he left his parents’ home to attend the Sanpokan in Jizodo, now Tsubame City, studying under Omori Shiyo, one of the four great Confucian scholars of northern Echigo. At seventeen he returned to Izumozaki to inherit the family position and became an apprentice village headman. The following year, however, he left home and entered the Buddhist order at Koshoji, a Soto Zen temple in the neighboring village. His reason for taking religious vows is unknown. From the age of twenty-two he spent twelve years in rigorous training at the Soto temple Entsuji in Tamashima, Bitchu, now Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture. According to 松本市壽, editor of 『定本良寛全集』, Ryokan awakened to waka during this period under the guidance of the priest Kokusen, himself a poet. Unfortunately, no poems from the Entsuji years survive.

Ryokan’s poetry is said to be characterized by the style of the Manyoshu. Yet his early poems show much influence from the first three imperial anthologies and the Shinkokin Wakashu. For example, the following poem, thought to date from around 1792, alludes to poems in the Kokinshu and Shinkokinshu.

　　あしびきの黒坂山の木の間より漏りくる月の影のさやけき　良寛

The following three poems are thought to be its sources.

木の間より漏りくる月の影見れば心尽くしの秋は来にけり

Anonymous, Kokinshu, Autumn I, no. 184.

秋風にたなびく雲の絶え間よりもれ出づる月の影のさやけさ

Sakyo no Daibu Akisuke, Shinkokinshu, Autumn, no. 413.

もみぢ葉を何惜しみけむ木の間より洩りくる月は今宵こそ見れ

Prince Tomohira, Minister of Central Affairs, Shinkokinshu, Winter, no. 592.

In Ryokan’s day, the mainstream poetic school was the Dojo school, descended from court-aristocratic poets who inherited the secret transmission of the Kokinshu tradition from Hosokawa Yusai. Ryokan initially wrote in that courtly style, as did his teacher Kokusen.

In 『良寛歌集』 (1992), Hideo Yoshino describes the change in Ryokan’s poetic style as follows:

His poetry began with the first three imperial anthologies. Yet he was not a man who could possibly relish the intellectual embellishment of poetry from the Heian period onward. Unable to be fully satisfied with such things, he gradually nourished his own poetic spirit and gradually shaped his own poetic voice. This came naturally into accord with the Manyoshu and achieved still greater depth. (p. 34)

Ryokan’s poems thus change from the Kokinshu manner to the Manyoshu manner: from the technically elaborate and conceptual to the direct and unadorned.

2. When the heart moves, a poem is born

There were three things Ryokan disliked: the calligraphy of calligraphers, the poems of professional poets, and composing poems on an assigned topic. 解良栄重, who knew Ryokan, recorded these as sayings of the master in 『良寛禅師奇話』 (1970). Sometimes the third item, “composing poems on an assigned topic,” is replaced by “restaurant cooking.” Kitaoji Rosanjin’s essay “Ryori Shibai” develops the story with restaurant cooking as the third dislike. Ryokan in fact left no poems on assigned themes, so that dislike is understandable. His remarks on calligraphers’ calligraphy and poets’ poems probably also contain an admonition to himself. According to 松本市壽, Ryokan disliked professional poets’ poems because he rejected a backward-looking poetry employing professional technical skill, preferring a manner of frank and natural feeling. (p. 8)

Ryokan wrote a statement on poetry entitled “Uta no Ji.” There he says the following, quoted from 渡辺秀英’s 『良寛歌集』, dated 1779 in this passage of the source:

One fits the small stirrings of the human heart to written words and sings them to give the heart release. To put it in familiar terms, crying is poetry; laughing is poetry. There is no separate thing called the heart of poetry. (p. 1)

He goes on to say:

Why should people of the present age have no poetry? Wise or foolish, in the capital or the countryside, whenever morning or evening brings them into contact with things, all that moves their hearts is poetry. (p. 1)

Editorial note: the body of the Japanese article gives 1779 here, while its bibliography gives 1979. Both original dates are retained rather than silently reconciled.

A poem is a person’s heart, and wherever the heart moves, there is poetry. If so, Ryokan’s final years invite particular attention. During the four years before he died, he shared his heart with a woman who was also at his bedside at the end. Her name was Teishin-ni (1798–1872), a Buddhist nun forty years younger than he. Their relationship added color to the end of his life. What sort of person was she?

Teishin-ni was born the daughter of Okumura Gohei, a retainer of the Nagaoka domain. She married a physician at seventeen but separated from him after five years. She shaved her head at Ennoji in Kashiwazaki and began life as a nun, continuing her training until twenty-nine. In 1826 she moved to the Enma hall in Fukushima, now Fukushima in Nagaoka City, and went to visit Ryokan, whom she had never met, to study poetry and Buddhist teaching. Ryokan was revered by a wide range of people, from peasants to influential figures, for his profound learning and artistic gifts, and he was popular with children as well. His reputation for great virtue is said to have reached Teishin-ni’s ears. Determined to seek his teaching, she brought a ball she had made and some waka to attract his attention and visited the Kimura household, where he was staying. Unfortunately, he was away. With no alternative, she left the ball and poems and set off home.

When Ryokan returned to the Kimura house some time later, he was impressed by her poem and sent a reply. His poem included a pun on tsuku, meaning both to bounce a ball and to follow him as a pupil, indicating that he would accept her as a student. Her wish was granted, and their teacher–pupil relationship continued for four years until his death.

Teishin-ni was both gifted and beautiful. When she appeared before Ryokan, he was sixty-nine and she was twenty-nine. Their age difference was great enough for her to be his granddaughter rather than merely his daughter. Yet romantic feelings developed between them, and the poems they exchanged became love poems. They are included in the exchange section of 『はちすの露』, Dew on the Lotus (1835), which Teishin-ni compiled after Ryokan’s death.

3. Dew on the Lotus

The exchange section of 『はちすの露』 contains thirty poems by Ryokan and twenty-three by Teishin-ni. Let us look at a few, beginning with their first meeting.

“Upon meeting him for the first time” — Teishin

　　君にかくあひ見ることのうれしさもまださめやらぬ夢かとぞ思ふ

“His reply” — the master

　　夢の世にかつまどろみてゆめを又かたるも夢もそれがまにまに

“As the night grew late in earnest conversation about the Way” — the master

　　白たへのころもでさむし秋の夜の月なかぞらにすみわたるかも

“Yet still feeling that it was not enough” — Teishin

　　向ひゐて千代も八千代も見てしがな空ゆく月のこと問はずとも

“His reply” — the master

　　心さへかはらざりせばはふつたのたえずむかはむ千代も八千代も

Having achieved her long-awaited meeting with Ryokan, Teishin-ni’s feelings blaze up. She is overwhelmed, finding it like a dream and almost unbelievable. Ryokan sends a poem that seems to enfold those heightened feelings: in this fleeting world, let us leave things to their course. Their animated conversation continues until late at night. When Ryokan gently hints that she should go home by composing on the autumn moon rising into mid-sky, Teishin-ni replies that she still wants to hear him speak. She would like to sit facing her teacher for thousands of years, so surely the moon does not matter. Confronted with such candid, unguarded feeling, a somewhat overwhelmed Ryokan responds in kind: if only your heart does not change, I will go on facing you forever.

The next poems concern their second meeting. Ryokan writes first.

“In a letter received after some time had passed” — the master

　　君や忘る道やかくるゝこのごろは待てどくらせど音づれもなき

“In respectfully sending a reply” — Teishin

　　ことしげきむぐらのいほにとぢられて身をば心にまかせざりけり

Ryokan urges Teishin-ni to visit. Waiting without any sign of her, he is losing patience. In contrast to the previous exchange, this time he is the eager one and writes in a slightly reproachful tone. She replies rather coolly that she has been too busy to come. In the book’s arrangement, the poems immediately before this exchange promise another meeting as the two part after their first encounter. No doubt each poem in the collection was written by the person to whom it is attributed, but their selection and order depend on Teishin-ni, the author. Some intention is at work there. At the second meeting, their relative ardor is reversed. What is her intention? Ryokan is an eminent, accomplished senior monk; Teishin-ni an unknown young nun. Perhaps she wants to convey that age and standing have no bearing on love. Looking at the exchange section as a whole, perhaps because it is written from her perspective, one gets the impression that Ryokan seeks her more ardently than she seeks him.

The next four poems date from Ryokan’s visit to Yoita, his father’s home village, where his younger brother was then living. Hearing that Ryokan would come, Teishin-ni hurried to see him. He was talking with villagers reluctant to say farewell. Seeing his sun-darkened skin and black robes, she said, “From now on I shall call you Mr. Crow.” He laughed: “That is a fitting name.”

　　いづこへも立ちてを行かむ明日よりはからすてふ名を人の付くれば

“When he said this” — Teishin

　　山がらす里にいゆかば子がらすも誘ひて行け羽ねよわくとも

“His reply” — the master

　　誘ひて行かば行かめど人の見てあやしめ見らばいかにしてまし

“Reply” — Teishin

　　鳶はとび雀はすずめ鷺はさぎ烏はからす何かあやしき

Ryokan sings that, now someone has named him Crow, he will fly off wherever he likes from tomorrow. Teishin-ni answers with another crow poem: if her teacher, the mountain crow, is going down to the village, he should take her, the young crow, along, even though her weak young wings may make her a burden. Suddenly setting aside the crow conceit, Ryokan returns to plain concern: he could take her, but what if other people saw them and thought it strange? Teishin-ni replies firmly that kites go with kites, sparrows with sparrows, herons with herons, and crows with crows—what is strange about that? A man anxious about appearances and an untroubled, resolute woman: one could almost mistake this for a young couple on a date today. Thinking more soberly, however, an elderly monk and a young nun in black robes moving affectionately about together in an Edo-period village would have been conspicuous indeed. They would certainly have attracted curious looks and gossip. To modern eyes the scene is charming, but in the context of her time Teishin-ni was a remarkably bold woman.

『はちすの露』 includes love poems of this kind as well as poems exchanged with Ryokan’s younger brother Yoshiyuki. Toward the end, however, the elderly Ryokan’s health deteriorates and tension suddenly rises. Illness prevents him from keeping his promises to Teishin-ni. Autumn passes, but even in winter his health does not recover. Echigo winters are harsh. She sends an encouraging poem, and after a while receives a reply asking her to leave her hermitage and come to him when spring grows warm, because he wants to see her. As she prays for his recovery, word suddenly arrives that his illness has worsened. She hurries to him. Fortunately his condition has settled, and from his sickbed he composes this poem.

　　いついつとまちにし人は來りけり今はあひ見て何かおもはむ

The person he had been wondering and waiting for has finally arrived. Now that he can see her, he has nothing left to wish for. How did Teishin-ni feel on hearing the poem he composed from his sickbed? Refusing to let the nearly extinguished flame of life go out before the beloved arrives, he has kept it burning. With no embellishment or addition, he tells the person he loves what is in his heart. He can no longer think of complicated things. What remains in the heart is simple, and that becomes poetry. A poem is a person’s heart. Teishin-ni now stays continually beside him.

At last comes the final scene.

Teishin

　　生き死にの界はなれて住む身にもさらぬわかれのあるぞ悲しき

This is Teishin-ni’s final poem. Though it sings of the grief of parting, it has a certain calm, with little overt expression of the poet’s emotions. Does that composure as separation from the beloved approaches arise from her service to the Buddha, beyond life and death? Or does she suppress her feelings in a measured poem out of kindness, wishing him to depart quietly and peacefully without disturbing his heart?

“Reply” — marked “Teishin” in the source heading

　　うらを見せおもてを見せてちるもみぢ

“Although these were not his own words, he spoke them to meet the moment: how deeply to be revered.”

In 『はちすの露』 this is presented as Ryokan’s death verse. It is a reply to Teishin-ni, but he no longer has the strength to write and summons his last reserves to speak the words aloud. Perhaps it means that, like falling maple leaves, he has lived showing both his underside and his face, everything about himself, and is now dying. The verse is not his own composition, but is treated as a precious utterance expressing his feeling at that moment. The face may signify Ryokan the monk, and the underside Ryokan the human being who loved Teishin-ni. Rather than say the underside comes first merely because that is how the original verse runs, I would like to think the order reflects Ryokan’s own feelings.

『和歌文学大系七四』 (2007) states: “Because Ryokan was too weak to compose a poem, he offered 木因’s verse to Teishin-ni.” As that note indicates, the original is the following verse by 谷木因, a haiku poet of Mino:

裏ちりつ表を散つ紅葉哉

4. Conclusion

Human encounters are mysterious. Though it was only four years, had Teishin-ni not entered Ryokan’s life, later generations could not have read his love poems. Their relationship brought the poems into being, and because Teishin-ni was also a poet, she could preserve them in a collection. This is unquestionably her achievement, but at the same time it is Ryokan’s achievement in being the person who moved her to do so. In other words, it had to be these two particular people.

The literary scholar Soma Gyofu (1883–1950), also renowned for his studies of Ryokan, describes their love as a mysterious sacred love: deeper than love between teacher and pupil, stronger than family love, and purer than lovers’ love. Popular interest, meanwhile, seems to focus on whether theirs was a sexual relationship. For literary scholars and poets, however, it may be either “sacred love” or “sexual love”—as if suggested by the fact that both expressions are pronounced seiai. What matters is truth within literature: entering the world of a work and seeking what is true for oneself.

Ryokan said that a poem is a person’s heart. To read poetry is surely to touch the author’s heart dwelling in the poem and feel one’s own heart tremble. How could one read Ryokan’s love poems without being moved?

References

Bibliographical titles and names are retained in their original spelling.

• 伊藤宏見　『良寛の歌と貞心尼』　新人物往来社　一九九二
• 上田三四二『良寛の歌ごころ』　考古堂書店　二〇〇六
• 大島花束　『良寛全集』　岩波書店　二〇〇一
• 北側省一　『良寛をめぐる女人たち』　考古堂　一九八九
• 解良栄重　『良寛禅師奇話』　野島出版　一九七〇
• 相馬御風　『大愚良寛』　考古堂書店　一九七四
• 相馬御風　『復刻良寛と貞心』　考古堂書店　一九九一
• 東郷豊治　『良寛全集 下巻』　東京創元社　一九八四
• 松本市壽編『定本良寛全集』　中央公論新社　二〇〇六
• 吉野秀雄　『良寛歌集』(東洋文庫午五五六)　平凡社　一九九二
• 渡辺秀英　『良寛歌集』　‎木耳社　一九七九