Japan Affairs Forum

What makes good poetry? The genre has developed and changed so much throughout times, and we now recognise new sub-genres such as rap, slam, dub poetry as well as variations of the more traditional written poems. The more novice and the old traditional forms of poetry are immeasurably different in shape. However, I believe the main criteria of elaborate poetry, or any literature for that matter, is the ability to transcend time. It’s the author’s incredible ability to produce his work in a way that a reader who picks it up decades, centuries, even millennia later, is still able to relate to it.

 Such is Yamanoue Okura’s (660-733) poetry. His poems are included in Man’yōshū (“Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves”), a key text in Japanese literature, containing Japanese poems from AD 347 to 759. His poems have a rather unusual subject matter which no other Japanese poet would have until modern times. Rather than expressing the beauty of nature (which is more traditional in Japanese poetry), Okura’s poems are mainly concerned with the lives of the people in a remote province that he governed in his life. These were people of poor backgrounds and low class. Even though he himself was a minor aristocrat, Okura was able to relate to the sufferings he saw around him. His poems also talk of his personal sufferings, for example, the loss of his son Furuhi (see below).

 Okura’s poems have a very personal tone to them, as if he has put himself in the shoes of his subjects. The expressions he uses aren’t obscure or abstract, making them easier to read and understand. Nonetheless, they still convey strong philosophical messages. He emphasises Confucian morality, though some of his poems have Taoism and Buddhism ideas. His poem The Impermanence of Human Life makes an observation of ageing, the different stages of human life that eventually crumble down to old age.

Yamanoue Okura

The impermanence of human life

(trans. by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite)

We are helpless in this world.

The years and months slip past

like a swift stream, which grabs and drags us down.

A hundred pains pursue us, one by one.

Girls, with their wrists clasped round

with Chinese jewels, join hands

and plan their youth away.

But Time cannot be stopped,

and when their youth is gone

their jet-black hair – black as fish’s bowels –

turns white, like a hard frost.

On their sugar-browned, glowing faces,

wrinkles are etched – by whom?

Boys, with their swords at their waists,

clutching the hunting bow,

mount their chestnut horses

on saddles linen-spun,

and ride on in their pride.

But is their world eternal?

He pushes back the door

where a girl sleeps within,

gropes to her side and lies

arm on her jewel arm.

But how few are those nights

before, with stick at waist,

he goes shunned and detested –

the Old are always so.

We grudge life moving on

but we have no redress.

I would become as those

firm rocks that see no change.

But I am a man in time

and time must have no stop.

Reading this poem, it seems as if Yamanoue Okura were reciting it in present time, even though it was written more than 1,000 years ago. Certain things have changed, of course. For example, “boys, with swords at their waists” in our present Western culture would be more like boys with laptops in their bags.  As opposed to Okura’s time, we have better means of preserving our youth. Should our hair change colour from jet-black into “hard frost”, we can simply dye it black again.

 But the main concepts discussed in this poem still remain the same and relevant also to our culture. For example, most girls still “plan their youth away”, daydreaming of their perfect wedding day and imagining how many children they would like to have. They get ready for a night out and instead of using “Chinese jewels” they decorate their wrists, necks and ears with bangles, chains and hoops from High street shops. Youth nowadays has the same excitement about it as it did in Okura’s time, it hasn’t changed.

 The same can be said about the feelings that concern ageing. Though, indeed, we can dye our hair, it doesn’t change the fact that below the surface the hair still remains “white, like a hard frost.” Though there are cultural norms regarding the elderly, many still feel “shunned and detested”, especially those with no children of their own. Despite medical advances, still “a hundred pains pursue us” and we complain about our health daily, more as we age.

 Despite plastic surgery and all kinds of diet enhancers, our bodies deteriorate and give way to old age. How many of us have dwelled on the fact that years have gone past too quickly? It doesn’t matter whether we spent those years being happy or miserable, or a bit of both. All we still think about is the fact that we will never have a chance to relive them.

 I think Okura’s main message in this poem is that we are but helpless observers of an age that slips past us. Months, years, centuries roll on as different regimes rise and fall; civilizations flourish and deteriorate. The Universe itself condenses and then expands to condense on itself again (according to some theories).

 The stages of our life follow the same pattern. We have all come from somewhere unknown, only to disappear into it again. Childhood, teenage years, adolescence, adulthood, middle-age, old age – all occur without us having a say in the timing of these processes.

 Though Okura observes himself and the people around him, he doesn’t attempt to question the meaning of time and life. He does bring in a reference of finding a partner by describing this beautiful image – a young man

 “pushes back the door where a girl sleeps within, gropes to her side and lies, arm on her jewel arm.”

 However, his next line abruptly cuts this picture, by saying such happy nights are all over too quickly and we are left with „stick at waist” to face old age. However, there is no further development on whether finding a partner would have anything to do with finding a purpose. Rather, it’s saying that when we are with someone, that’s when we are happiest. Hence, youth runs past us like a gush of wind in comparison to the slow motion of old age, when we are left alone.

 Though this poem does not seek out the meaning of life, it reminds us of its mystery. Okura stated that he himself was but “a man in time” who cannot confirm anything other than the fact that “time must have no stop.” Being curious creatures, we always seek explanations to all mysteries, but sometimes there simply aren’t any. Time is what it is, whether it has a meaning or not. The only thing we can be sure of is that it carries on permanently, while a single human life remains impermanent.

 However, through art, a part of this impermanent human life can be embedded in time, as long as the work of art remains in existence.  Through Okura’s poems, I can imagine what life was like for him and those around him. It’s that same surreal feeling I get when watching on video of someone who is dead in reality. Though the facts are there, the mind finds it difficult to perceive that someone can be dead if they are alive and well on the screen. Few poets can transcend time in this way, but Yamanoue Okura is definitely one of them.