KKS Kanajo 1

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Text

倭歌やまとうたは人の心を種として、よろづの言の葉とぞなれりける。世の中にある人、事・業わざ繁げきものなれば、心に思ふことを見るもの聞くものにつけて言ひ出だせるなり。花に鳴く鶯うぐひす、水に住む蛙かはづの声を聞けば、生きとし生けるもの、いづれか歌を詠まざりける。力をも入れずして、天地あめつちを動かし、目に見えぬ鬼神おにかみをもあはれと思はせ、男女の仲をも和らげ、猛たけき武士もののふの心をも慰なぐさむるは歌なり。

Yamato poems take human hearts as their seeds, and become ten thousand words. People in the world are surrounded by a profusion of things, so they entrust what they think in their hearts to what they see and hear and send forth speech. When we hear the warblers chirping in the flowers and the voices of the frogs who live in the water, what among living things does not compose poetry? The thing that can move earth and heaven without expending strength, make unseen gods and demons feel pathos, soften the relations between men and women, and soothe the hearts of fierce warriors, is poetry.

Notes

Yamato poems

The word uta that is used here as "poem" has a broader meaning, one that encompasses folk songs and other chants as well as poetry (whether chanted, sung, or read silently or out loud). I have used the term "poem" rather than "song" in the translation, but it should be remembered that any use of this term "poem" may also have the suggestion of a song or chant as well, and does not always necessarily refer solely to a waka poem. This is the only use of Yamatouta ("Yamato poem") in the KKS, but uses in other sources show that it generally indicates a Japanese poem in contrast to a Chinese one. Yamato is the name of a province or area of Japan, but it also used more broadly to refer to Japan as a whole.

Ten thousand words

That is, "many/various words." The term koto no ha for "word" contains ha ("leaf"), creating a connection to the "seed" of the first part.

many things

koto waza -- this seems to broadly refer to anything humans do or experience in their daily lives.

warbler

The uguisu, a common early spring image.

A crying warbler (uguisu)

fierce warriors

In the Heian period the word mononofu usually indicates not just a warrior, but one who is too rough and uncultured to understand the finer aesthetics of the court culture. In other words, poems can reach even people who have no understanding of their proper aesthetic.

frog

Because the warbler is a spring image, many commentaries have suggested that this is an autumn "kajika frog," but as Takeoka and Katagiri both show through exhaustive examples, the term kawazu is just a poetic word for "frog" and refers to normal spring frogs. Thus this sentence does not present paired spring and autumn imagery, but just two spring images used to stand in for all animals.

A frog (kawazu)

Analysis

The first section of the preface presents a broad description of the nature of poetry. Parallels for the expression can be found in the 5th century The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons as well as the preface and classical commentaries to the Classic of Poetry.

In particular, the so-called "Great Preface" to the Classic of Poetry reads:

Poetry is the product of earnest thought. Thought [cherished] in the mind becomes earnest; exhibited in words, it becomes poetry...therefore, correctly to set forth the successes and failures [of government], to move Heaven and Earth, and to excite spiritual Beings to action, there is no readier instrument than poetry.

- trans. James Legge , Classic of Poetry, preface

The commentaries to the Classic expand on this, but Katagiri holds that Tsurayuki's expression of the thought is clearer.

Medieval commentaries contained a number of specific examples to explain the references in the second part of the paragraph. Several sources contain legends involving frogs and birds actually composing 31-syllable poems, although these are roundly condemned starting in the 15th century and have no identifiable sources outside of these commentaries. More long lasting in the tradition are citations of poems that supposedly "moved the heavens," such as those that brought rain or brought a horse back to health -- these poems are found in actual sources but the legends are later inventions. See Katagiri v1 p 101, ff. for details. Although the legends have no real basis or applicability to Tsurayuki's poetics, they exerted a large amount of influence in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.

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