“The Passion of Japanese Poetry”

 

Life gives us such beauty and pain, sometimes in almost equal measures.  I find solace in reading selections from the great Man’yoshu, this document from 8^th century Japan.  I have written here before about this great collection of over 4500 poems, but of course, not all of them appeal to our modern senses and tastes.  In particular the love poems from the Man’yoshu, written over a span of 130 years, are poems that liberate us, throw us into a free-floating dreamscape, where our sentiments connect within those lovers who lived 1500 years before us.

The passion of these poems cannot be denied.  They speak over the centuries to our own hearts, and in some lucky cases, to our own experience to each poem, but this not fully my own interpretation.  I am relying on commentary by Ooka Makoto and translations of Ian Hideo Levy, from “Love Songs from the Man’yoshu”.  This small, beautifully bound and illustrated book (by the late Miyata Masayuki) is published by Kodansha International in Tokyo.rience.  I will attempt to give some of the beauty and passion of these poems.

Lady Nyo

 

Going over the fields of murasaki grass

That shimmer crimson

Going over the fields marked as imperial domain

Will the guardian of the fields not see you

As you wave your sleeves at me?

–Princess Nukata

 

This is one of the most famous poems in the Man’yoshu, given prominence as it appears towards the beginning of the document.

It is answered by Prince Oama:

 

If I despised you, who are as beautiful

As the murasaki grass,

Would I be longing for you like this,

Though you are another man’s wife?

 

Those the poem seems to be of a love triangle, it is not actually so.  Princess Nukata is now married to the emperor Tenchi, and her heart is torn between Prince Oama, her former husband.  These poems have a gracious melody and a way to stir the emotions of modern readers.

 

In a single sprig of

Of these blossoms

Are concealed a hundred words;

Do not treat me lightly.

—–Fujiwara Hirotsugu

 

This is a courting poem.  The poet plucked off a branch of cherry blossoms, tied his poem to it, and sent it to a young girl.  This was a well-used method of presenting a poem.  A twig of blooming tree flowers, a blade of sawgrass, a branch of plum, wild plum or maple leaves in the fall.  The answering poem from the girl was touching, too. It says that the reason the sprig is bent is that it couldn’t support all the words it contains.

The heart longs to say yes. But language still hesitates.

 

Whose words are these

Spoken to the wife of another?

Whose words are these;

That bade me untie

The sash of my robe?

—-Anonymous

 

This is most likely a folk song, and these kind of poems figure in great amount in the Man’yoshu.  “the wife of another” was an object of male sexual desire; the poets of the Man’yoshu showed a special attachment to this theme of secret love.

 

The silk-treeflower that blooms in the day

Closes as it sleeps,

Yearning through the night.

Should only its lord look upon it?

You too, my vassal, enjoy the sight.

—–Lady Ki

 

Lady Ki  was the wife of Prince Aki, but he was sent into exile and she became familiar with the great poet, Otomo Yakamochi. There is a reversal of sexes here as Lady Ki writes as a man. This is not unusual for the period.  Actually, Otomo, the scion of the great Otomo house, was above her.  This is poetic license for the time.

 

Fearful as it would be

To speak it out in words,

So I endure a love

Like the morning glory

That never blooms conspicuously.

—–Anonymous

 

It is thought that a curse would be brought upon the speaker to speak the other’s name.  Hence, we read many poems like this one above in the Man’yoshu, not naming the two lovers.

 

As I turn my gaze upward

And see the crescent moon,

I am reminded

Of the trailing eyebrows

Of the woman I saw but once.

—-Otomo Yakamochi

 

One of my favorites and written when Otomo was only 16!  There is an expression that comes from the Chinese meaning ‘eyebrow moon”, i.e., the new moon, the crescent moon.  This poem refers to the painted trailing eyebrows of women in this ancient period.  But how precocious of Otomo at just 16!

 

Though I sleep

With but a single thin rush mat

For my bedding,

I am not cold at all

When I sleep with you, my lord.

—-Anonymous

 

A lovely, poignant poem, though it seems the woman, with her single thin rush mat is of the lower class.  However, beautiful enough to be included in the Man’yoshu.  And about that: The Man’yoshu was the first and probably the last collection of poems that included such a range of people in ancient Japanese society:  fishermen’s songs, weaver’s songs, priest’s poems, prostitute’s laments besides the imperial court and upper classes.  It would never be seen again.

 

O for a heavenly fire!

I would reel in

The distant road you travel,

Fold it up,

And burn it to ashes.

—–The Daughter of Sano Otogami

 

One of the most famous love poems in the Man’yoshu.  She was a female official who served in the Bureau of Rites, whose precincts were forbidden to men. She had a secret affair with a minister named Nakatomi Yakamori.  Their affair was discovered and he was sent into exile as punishment. They exchanged around sixty-five poems expressing their concern for each other’s safety and pledging that their love would not be changed by exile. The distant road is the long road he must travel to exile.

 

Brave man like the catalpa bow

That, once drawn,

Does not slacken-

Can it be that he is unable to bear

The vicissitudes of love?

—-Anonymous

 

This is another of my favorite poems of the Man’yoshu.  I used it as a heading in an episode of the  published “Song of the Nightingale”, where Lord Nyo frets as to his resolve and manhood. He finds himself, as the figure in the original poem, bewildered that he, ‘a strong man’ could find himself powerless to resist the invisible passion of love.  He is more used to war and weapons, something tangible, not the chimera of love.  He describes himself as ‘an ugly, old warrior”.

These love poems churn the mind and enflame the passions, along with the  winds.  One would have to have a heart of stone not to be swayed by such passionate beauty in verse.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

“Song of the Nightingale” was published at Amazon.com, 2015.

 

 

 

 

‘O Absalom!’, from “A Seasoning of Lust”

 

Absalom, King David’s son, caught by his hair in battle.

 

The Lady Nyo, with glitter

It must be the sultriness of the weather, the heat that pulsates in this ‘spring’ air that brings our thoughts to passion, sex.   June opens with a furnace blast and there is still three more weeks of spring.  But summer has more than appeared, and we will have to make the best of it.  The night is cooler, and one can stand the touch of another, as long as there are fans and the touch is fleeting. 

 It is still spring, with all the fertility of  pollen, reproduction, grafting, etc….so perhaps if one’s thoughts turn to passion, it can be expected.

Lady Nyo

–

O Absalom!

–

O Absalom,

Ensnared by  long hair in the

Boughs of an oak,

Pierced through the heart three times–

The shimmer of life now fading.

–

I,

Pulled into mysteries

So abandoned by love

Now given over to lust

Charged with stolen rapture

Dizzy as a drunken dervish-

One hand upward to Heaven

One hand spilling to Earth

Skirts stiffened with sins hard as stone

Corrupted over a life time and now–

Flayed on an unending mandala.

–

Mystery of Life,

Unstoppable desire,

O beautiful Absalom,

We float upon a divine river

Entangled in the reeds of human wanting.

–

This is our nature,

 This our calling while

Flesh answers flesh.

What quarter be given when the heart is

Overwhelmed by passions excess?

–

Lie still–

Let the waters cleanse our loins,

Let the mud of banks soothe our wounds,

Our blood mingle with the floating grasses,

Our hearts sink beneath the surface.

–

Let the rivers of Babylon

Carry us away.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009,

from ” A Seasoning of Lust”, published by Lulu.com

“I was beginning to HATE belly dance.”

I listened in shock.  I was at a luncheon Tuesday, and these words were  from  a young, 20 year old student.

She was given my email and phone number, but it was wrong and couldn’t contact me.  Here  she was in front of me, a beautiful young woman, who was expressing her sentiments about something I loved.

This I had to hear, and I wanted to know what would drive her to make such a statement.  The more she talked, the more I felt like crying.  It became pretty clear what was the problem and I thought back to my own beginning with belly dance.

I could really relate:  For the first year…it was one choreography class after another where we went through the motions of different set dances.  Not hard, looking back,  but intimidating then.

I hated belly dance, too.  I paid for many classes that I skipped.

Well, each of us as dancers are different, but there are common things drawing us together.

A lot of women are drawn to belly dance because it’s such a beautiful and sexual expression.  Yes, it is.  There is no way you can get around this because the usage of the body in belly dance is earthy, expressive, sensual.  It comes up from the ground, infuses the limbs, and ….when it’s done in the most expressive ways….shines forth in our faces.  It can create an aura.

What happened here? What happened to her?

I think…and this is a very broad statement and doesn’t apply to every teacher…but to some it does.  They rely on set choreography to impart a certain competence in students: to at least give them some bang for their bucks.  Six weeks of different set routines and some think they have made the jump to dancing.

Sometimes it works….but many times it doesn’t.  The drop out rate is high.

There are many things that kill our confidence, our enthusiasm, our excitement in trying something new.  I have seen much of this in life, and much of this applies to me.  There have been people…male and female….almost strangers and relatives who are so destructive in their own behaviors that they can’t allow someone else to fly….but must control and demean a person.  They are out to destroy any creativity or confidence.  This is usually a mental issue of theirs, but it’s hard not to trip up over the actions.

It can set you back, derail you.  For a while.

As she talked, I was fighting back tears.  This young woman saw something beautiful and hoped it was accessible in belly dance, but there was something fundamentally missing.  She tapped into this in the very beginning.  Students don’t  know what it was, it’s buried too damn deep….but the teachers should.

I wondered why some of my students just stood there: they didn’t move, and damn it! you have to move in belly dance.  It’s a natural expression linked to the body/music/visual stimuli.

Perhaps it’s this:  lack o’ confidence.  Not trusting that your body is going to be trained soon enough…but first, you have to free yourself from the mental images of limitations we all carry around  as women….not being ‘good’ enough, flexible enough, graceful enough, etc.

You have to believe you are capable of creating BEAUTY!

You have to trust your body and the  spark of LOVE for dance. You have to build upon this trembling idea, small and unreliable as it seems at first.

I now have 6  private students of various levels. I swore  I would never have more than two in a class because I am a hands-on teacher.  I can’t do my job with a cattle call…but I really care about what happens with my students.  I didn’t think I would be so invested in this, but just writing this down makes me weep.

Encouraging them to believe in their bodies, to develop their confidence and independence and individuality…that is what I go after.  I don’t give a fig if they can all do a movement in lock step: I care whether they are energized by what they are doing…or even what they THINK they are doing.

I want them MINDFUL. I want them to glory in their individual possibilities.  I’ve seen small miracles grow and astound both the dancer and the observer.

How do you develop the love of their bodies, this trust of themselves, the ability to call upon their muscle memory at will….to make these so  natural movements a part of their daily lives…to really transform how they see and feel about themselves?

That is what I am after.  I am looking for passion…and we all have it, in spades.  I am out to build confidence.

I encourage them to shimmy in the fish market.  I implore them to do infinity loops in the check out line.  Sure it looks like you have to go to the bathroom, or you are smuggling a tv set between your legs and don’t want to drop it, but anything can set off a dancer.  The clack of some rhythm…it doesn’t have to be musical ….it creates a music and motion inside and we bring it out into our bodies.

We bring it to the surface, expressed in the most individualistic ways.

At this luncheon, there was a dumbek  drummer who offered his drumming in my classes.  I never allow a man in a class, but this would be a special case:  he’s a competent drummer and I think it could be a freeing agent for these women who don’t yet feel this instinctual rhythm coursing in such natural ways through their bodies….impelling them to move, to shake, to find their bodies and creativity in dance.

This young woman is going to be a student of mine this summer.  She’s had some damage, but haven’t we all.  The role of a teacher is to heal as best we can.  We heal ourselves when we attend to our students.

I have to say, and it won’t come as a surprise to those who read this blog…but I LOVE belly dance.  But it wasn’t always like that.  I had to work through so much and claim what I now know is my  creativity….Over and over.

Blind dancing:  that’s what I call it.  It’s a technique to free the inhibitions of new dancers and even dancers that are ‘stuck’.  They are blindfolded and all other students sit on the floor, and the chosen dancer is asked to just move in the most uninhibited way she can imagine to music.  It doesn’t have to be belly dance music.  I use Melissa Etheridge…her angry angst!   It doesn’t have to be ‘belly dance’.  Only one thing is asked: that she reach way down into her core….and bring up something.  She make it ‘real’.

Show me the passion. Show me the dancer I know is inside.

I think confidence building is the key here…and I am going out on a limb.  I’m asking my students to do the same.

I think we can get pass the “I hate Belly Dance” to the glory.

Teela (who is Lady Nyo dancing)