Leaves of Impermanence, Colors of Time: Seasonal
Imagery in Selected Nara Poetry
Jen Veldhuyzen
Fall Semester, 2008
Jen Veldhuyzen
Prof. Gustav Heldt
JPTR 335
25 September 2008
Leaves of Impermanence,
Colors of Time: Seasonal Imagery in Selected Nara
Poetry
As the leaves outside the dorm room finally begin to fall, hailing
the end of this summer inferno without air conditioning, first year
students everywhere glory in the coming of autumn. Much like these
first year students, the Japanese poets of the Nara period give a
special significance to the seasons and their transitions. In poetry,
yearly times of change illustrate the stages of human life in many
facets, altering the literary view of knowledge, growth, and beauty.
In the poetry of Kakinomo no Hitomaro and his predecessor, seasons
explain the phases of human life, investigate the transience of
existence, and extend that discussion of transience to the political
realm, finally providing a means to compare the individual’s
relationship to society and time.
The Man’yôshü poets used seasons to expound on a reasonably wide
range of topics but the most blatantly obvious imagery pertains to a
discourse on the phases of human life. Every life begins in the
youth of spring, continues strongly through the peak years of summer,
and begins to fade away as the autumn brings winter in “an
aesthetic of impermanence.” (65) In one of the earliest poems in
the Man’yôshü the poet Lady Nukata answers the question as to
which of the seasons, spring or fall, she prefers. Nukata admits
that even she, a great noblelady, must “leave the green [leaves]
with longing, and that is [her] only regret.” (66, lines 8-9) In
other words, we all pass into phases, such as death, where we must
leave behind former treasures, former ‘green leaves.’ The
question really addresses Nukata’s degree of willingness to release
her hold on the impermanent.
For an answer to the comparison between spring and autumn, Nukata
first treats the greatness and the shortcomings of spring: the
seasons of youth or strength in our lives. When we enter the spring
seasons of life we enjoy many blessings, many ‘green leaves,’ but
“the grass is so deep that nothing can be seen.” (66, line 4) If
spring is youth or strength, Lady Nukata’s ‘deep grass’ can
refer to the greatness of the opportunities and the freshness of the
distractions before us that keep us from understanding and plucking
substance out of our lives. The hindrance of the ‘deep grass’
finally moves Lady Nukata to choose the autumn hills in the last line
of the poem. She writes that, in contrast to spring, the autumn
season brings wisdom, the ability to “see the tree leaves/And pick
the yellow ones with wonder.” (66, lines 9-10) As she inevitably
leaves one phase of her physical lifespan to enter the door of
another, she recognizes a need to understand and gather from each
phase she enters.
While for Lady Nukata spring and autumn seasons point to evanescent
phases, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro uses the seasons in his Yoshino praise
poems to express power and control. The Empress Jitô has
symbolically identified herself with her predecessors by visiting the
Yoshino palace, and as she looks out from it onto the land, Hitomaro
writes her a glory poem. Overall, it speaks using contrasting pairs
to establish her legitimate reign over all areas of life, from the
mountains to the rivers. The seasonal imagery arises as “the
mountain gods present their offerings/bringing her blossoms in the
spring/and yellow leaves when autumn comes…”(73, lines 7-9) This
section serves a two-fold purpose. On one level, these can be read
as praises of the Empress’s person. A woman gifted with ‘blossoms
in the spring’ is physically blessed with the power and beauty of
youth. Similarly, a woman who has picked the yellow leaves of autumn
has gathered other features such as grace and wisdom. A person
possessing both characteristics of spring and autumn makes a good
ruler; she has everything needed to qualify her. Another purpose of
these symbols is the element of homage. The mountain gods relinquish
the spring and the autumn to Jitô. She controls both ends of the
spectrum, from spring to fall, her power encompassing not only the
extremes of time but also both sides of nature’s character. In
this way, the seasons give insight into her reign.
The seasons come into play in a more intriguing way in Hitomaro’s
poetry when it becomes difficult to reconcile the fragility of
humanity with the god-like power assigned to human political leaders
and governments. In his poems on Prince Karu’s hunting forays
Hitomaro almost manages to move beyond the political praise. When
Hitomaro compares “our lord who passed away” to “the autumn
leaves” (75, line 3) he uses an incredibly commonplace comparison
without elaboration or discussion on the emperor’s divine leaving,
essentially saying that just like everyone else and the leaves, the
emperor died. The near bluntness of this statement, placing the
bygone emperor on a transient plane, not only illuminates the passing
nature of political governments themselves but also brings the
emperor down to the rest of humanity.
It can be argued that this reading of the text forces into Hitomaro’s
poetry an egalitarian worldview that should not be assumed given the
historical context. Point taken--however, in the next tanka
Hitomaro continues, “the blaze can be seen rising…the moon has
set,” (75, second poem) indicating that though the emperor has died
there is a new power. Hitomaro supposedly writes the poem
legitimizing the authority of the new prince, Karu, (74) and the sun
rising represents this boy’s ascent to the throne. However, the
sun will set again. The summer reign of the “peer of the sun”
(line 6 of the first short poem, 75) can end in autumn leaves. There
is always a higher power, says Hitomaro. He ends his poem series
with a short tanka emphasizing the eternality of the dynasty
by linking Karu to his predecessor using mixed tenses. “The time
IS COMING,” Hitomaro writes, “when the prince who WAS the pier of
the sun…/set out to hunt.” (emphasis mine, last tanka)
This time confusion allows the life of the past emperor to describe
what Karu will do in the future (75). Despite the projected
confidence in the ruling political power, however, there is always
the knowledge that the previous sun did set. There will always be a
cycle. The government, centralized around one person, may establish
a near-permanence in its god-like dynasty, but times will always
continue to change as people pass on. The double-nature of the short
poems on the hunting trip works because of the slightest seasonal
symbolism. Remove the images of the autumn leaves and the sun, and
you have a praise poem completely lacking any other interior meaning.
Hitomaro continued to milk the seasons of political uses in his Poems
On Passing the Ruined Capital of Ömi, this time extending the
idea of human transience from emperors to apply to societies. This
time the complication arises in acknowledging a capital that has
fallen out of favor. The Ömi capital had once housed the emperor
Tenchi, held in high esteem by the ruling Yamato court, but on the
other hand it had housed the enemies of the current regime. (79) The
reconciliation or appeasement of the Ömi court spirits occurs when
Hitomaro recognizes the beauty and power of the court throughout the
beginning of the poem and then uses seasonal imagery to show that the
political transitions were natural and inevitable.
Hitomaro acknowledges then that the “divine sovereign,” Tenchi,
(line 13) chose to rule at Ömi, but then moves on from his
description of the rocky, “barbarous” landscape (lines 11-12) to
speak of an appropriate replacement. Spring always ushers in the
new, and in lines 16-17 we read, “Here were his glorious halls/Now
all is overgrown by the spring grass/And clouded by the haze of the
spring sun.”(80) The new ‘sun,’ and the new emperor, cloud over
the glory of the old regime. The spring has come, conquering the
cold environment, and the new courtiers and new actions of the court
have overgrown and overtaken the old. The spring transition
emphasizes not merely the transience of the old regime, but also the
greatness of the new. At the same time, however, Hitomaro continues
to say in the final line that “we are filled with sadness,”
illuminating his nostalgia of the passing phases that society must
inevitably leave behind. Only the use of the seasons can express the
necessity of forward motion while touching so tenderly and naturally
on that which came before. Entire capitals, like emperors and
humans, fade into the past to give way to a greater future.
Court society, however transient, held a bond over Hitomaro that he
recognized. His poetry did not necessarily come voluntarily; the
government commissioned him to write praise poems and undoubtedly
kept him separated from his family. The seasons in his Poems on
Parting With His Wife At Iwami illustrate the special human
conflict with time and society’s consuming demands by fleshing out
the speaker’s internal struggle with his desire for his beloved and
his timed duty to court.
The speaker speaks of his time with the girl in summer terms. She
felt to him like a warm sea, and Hitomaro puts forth many beach and
seaweed metaphors in the first lines to illustrate the pleasure the
lovers experience together. (81-82) The speaker’s time with his
beloved is cut short, however, by his requirements to the court and
ultimately to society. He thinks of her “wilting with sorrow/like
the summer grass” (82, line 13). The heat of their love and the
passion they feel in separating themselves leaves the girl wilted.
As time moves the seasons on, so time has cut short their moments
together in the name of the court. The girl must move on from the
summer they both feel inside as the speaker leaves her “like the
dew and the frost.” (line 7) The separation quickly creates a
winter. There is limited contact from afar in Hitomaro’s day, and
the two feel keenly the cold cruelty that time has inflicted on them.
The memories together become like dew and frost, like cold
transparencies, as the summer grass wilts.
The speaker is separated from his girl by autumn, the parting that
brings the pair from summer together to winter apart. “Through the
yellow leaves as they scatter/I cannot see my girl waving her
sleeves” (83, 12 line on page) Yellow leaves are autumn’s
messangers, the servants and soldiers of time that take us away into
the future and obscure our connections with the past and present.
They are the driftings and partings in life that interrupt as the
winds of time pass. They are the commitments that take the speaker
away and fly between the lovers. The speaker must move forward, away
from the summers he spent with his girl, on to the winter of court
life, through the parting of autumn.
However, even as the yellow leaves force the speaker from summer to
winter, they themselves are also passing away on the wind. “Yellow
leaves, falling on the autumn hill/ Stop scattering for just a
while/So I may see the village of my girl,” requests Hitomaro.
(84) The scattering need not continue forever. The wind may die
down. The changing of the seasons continues unchangeably, and by
using the seasons to describe his departure Hitomaro offers hope that
the speaker may return. He poignantly requests in this last stanza
that he be allowed to rejoin or at least see his beloved, in the hope
that the court, like weather, is not permanent. Interestingly
enough, Hitomaro uses similar yellow-leaf language to address the
death of the woman in a later poem (84). Using the seasons always
indicates that if a current situation is unsatisfactory, it may alter
itself over time. Perhaps even death possesses a seasonal quality,
hints Hitomaro’s usage.
Seasons illustrate human transience. Hitomaro took this idea and
extended it in his poetry, analyzing this transience in respect to
the emperors he praised to remind his readers of a humanity that came
hand in hand with their ‘godhood.’ He used the seasons to praise
his clients, but also showed that their position as humans came with
a fading quality. This fading quality does not limit itself to the
human individual, he pointed out, but to entire societies. The
individual has hope, and indeed, value because the society above him
is transient. When the master limps, the servant has more equal
footing. While society may work as an agent of time to move us
forward, we all have the hope that in the even further future we may
stand on our own terms again. Just as autumn follows summer, spring
follows winter, and our lives are most valuable when we can take the
most insight and internal beauty out of the time we have been given.
Hope, then, is the knowledge that we may pick the autumn leaves that
keep us from our dreams and discover that beyond them there may be a
greener field.
