Just Living

by Steven D. Carter

The medieval Buddhist poet-monk Tonna (1289–1372) was regarded as the leading poet of his day and a prominent scholar and critic. Despite his commoner status, he was assigned the task of acting as compiler for an imperial anthology of poetry and counted a number of prominent courtiers among his students and patrons. And yet his works, which remained required reading for virtually all serious poets in Japan for five hundred years after his death, have until recently received little scholarly attention in either Japan or the West. This anthology contains translations of 134 of Tonna's uta (the classical poetic form) and 16 linked verse couplets ( renga ) from his Grass Hut Collection and selections from a work of prose criticism, From a Frog at the Bottom of a Well , along with an introduction and explanatory notes, a glossary of important names and places, and a list of sources for the poems.

Genres: Poetry, Japan

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2002

About the author

Professor of Japanese literature

Steven D. Carter has written eleven books and numerous articles on pre-modern Japanese literature and is an award-winning translator. He has received numerous academic awards, as both a scholar and a teacher. At Stanford he teaches courses in pre-modern Japanese literature and language.

Professor Carter's research interests include: Japanese poetry, poetics, and poetic culture; the Japanese essay; travel writing; historical fiction; and the relationship between the social and the aesthetic. His most recent book is Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Basho (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Before coming to Stanford in 2003, Professor Carter taught at UCLA, Brigham Young University, and UC-Irvine, serving as chair of the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department at the latter institution for 10 years.

He began his study of Japanese language and culture as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, receiving his BA in Japanese with minors in English and history in 1974. He received an MA and PhD from UC-Berkeley, concentrating on classical and medieval Japanese poetry. His interest in Hiroshima dates to a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum in 1969, during one of the hotter periods of the Cold War.

Reviews

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

In fair Yoshino
the wind low
on the mountain slopes
grows more chilly still;
and half-hidden
in the haze—
fine flakes of falling snow.
---


Even in a world
full of false promises
they will not
forget
their pledge
to come back home—
those geese now flying away.
--


On a night in spring
the moon
has not emerged yet
above the branches—
where
on the mountain rim
blossoms are first to appear.
--


Here in my cottage
I forget
my loneliness,
thanks to the blossoms—
only to find myself waiting
for someone
to show them to.
--


Yoshino River
where on the peaks
cherry blossoms
must now be falling—
to make on unfrozen
waters
a layer
of white snow.
--


Not at all like snow,
so ready to melt away—
these cherry blossoms:
fallen but then
lifted again
by storm winds
in the garden.
--


Nearby my bed,
flowering orange
fills
the night
with its scent—
until both dream
and reality
take me into the past.
--


The moon remains,
its shining
now unobscured
by leaves on the trees—
gone
in a storm
that has left
nothing
of autumn behind.
--


High on the peak
of cloud-capped
Mount Fuji
the smoke is rising—
and no more easy to hide
is the burning
in my heart.
--


The heart
of someone
who refuses to respond—
what
to compare it to?
The rocks and the trees
after all,
do not bear a man
ill will.
--


Those no longer
at a distance
from each other
suffer all the more,
when every slight,
every pain—
not a thing
remains
hidden.
--


So feckless a hope—
that the moon
crossing the sky
would be enough
to keep us
in the same world—
held together
by a memory.
--


The wilting flower
in the heart
of one whose love
has died and gone
in the end fades
utterly—
down to its very hue.
--


The pledge
we exchanged
in a dream-world
long ago
has never changed;
what turned out
to be fickle
is the world
of reality.
--


To prattle on,
complaining
about the woes
of one’s situation—
that is to betray
the heart
that cast the world aside.
--


Ah, the past, we think—
but what
we look back upon
was the same world
of woe—
remembered fondly,
perhaps,
because we hadn’t
yet grown old.
--


And if she should ask,
“Look how drenched through
they are—
the sleeves of your robe!
What is it
that has made them so?”
how am I to reply?
--


A couple in turmoil
is an image
reflected
back from a mirror:
there you appear
face to face
but nothing passes
between.
--


Once, I was sure
that I would find
the loneliness
more than I could bear.
Until,
by getting used to it, I got used to
the mountain depths.

[♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luvvv these poems sm

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars.) In the introduction, Carter makes an unconvincing case that Tonna is an overlooked poet from the weaker poetic era stretching from Teika to Shōtetsu/Sōgi. I'll grant that Tonna is almost as good as Teika or Shunzei, particularly in the nature poetry, but much of his work is mannered and predictable (fifty identical love poems about "tears that wet my sleeves" etc.).