The Dance of the Dust on the Rafters: Selections from Ryojin-hisho

by Ryojin-hisho, Yasuhiko Moriguchi (Editor), David Jenkins

These folk song, amongst the oldest in Japan, originated in the street, with the common people. These songs resonate with spirit—lusty and devotional, they are visions of love and faith. Filled with diverse feelings and experiences, sung by many voices, all of these songs come from the heart. [Former Brooken Moon Press title transferred to White Pine Press.]

Genres: Poetry

145 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1989

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best-known Japanese literature from the beginning of the last millennium is comprised of fiction and diaries oriented around court life. These works are remarkable not only for their sharp perception and esthetic power, but because they were written exclusively by women (the men were off writing literature in Chinese that no one now reads). But one cannot work through the diaries or the "Tale of Genji" without noticing how much has been left out, how these writers describe a society uncommonly self-obsessed even in competition with other tiny royal cliques. That narrowness of vision is reflected even in the verse that both men and women of the era, who were prone to send each other stylized variations on the themes of changing seasons and sleeves wet with tears that grow repetitive over time. The effect feels at times like peering into a terrarium. In contrast, there was a vibrant culture of sung verse outside the relatively small confines of the palace compounds. We know this because one of the court's members, the Emperor Go-Shirikawa, was so fond of country songs that he collected twenty volumes of them, of which, sadly, only one book and a portion of another have survived. "The Dance of the Dust in the Rafters" is a translated selection of these songs. And they possess the enormous range of subject and the vital observation of nature and work that the court poetry lacks. Here is a song about rituals at a shrine:
"Who dances really nicely?
Yes,
the priestess at the shrine,
the little leaves of the great oak,
and then, I feel,
the center of a wheel,
the spinning-top,
the midgets, clowns and puppets,
and in the flowery garden,
butterflies and little birds.

A following song warns that if a dancing girl does not raise her arms, God will judge her as lazy and she will be sorry. This is a world, not just of religious rites with drumming and dancing girls, but of wandering mountain-monks, of fishermen regretting that their profession violates their Buddhist vows (by catching turtles), of mothers lamenting the fate of their children, and of course, many lovers full of longing, desire, regret, disillusion or anger.

It seems to me
the gods of Inari
have been cruel.

I know I did not pray
for someone else
to have you.

In many songs, there is a combination of acute observation, an unflinching realism (where not inflected by Buddhism), with a dash of wit:

Things that bend--
prawns,
gins,
horns of cows,
tips of crowns,
spines of old men
on canes.

Or anger, when a mother laments that her only daughter was taken by a noble for his kitchen, her son for the boat of a priest of a large shrine. "Look down on me,/you gods and Buddhas./Why have you cursed me so?" There is social commentary:

The gods
my neighbor's eldest daughter
celebrates are
curly hair
unruly hair
hair that falls upon the brow.

The royals of the age of Genji lived in their palace compounds, relieved even of the burden of administering the nation that they supposedly ruled. That task was reserved by and for the Fujiwara clan, in an arrangement that ended in the violent war captured in "The Tale of the Heiki", in which, Go-Shirakawa, although a retired emperor, is a large presence. But Genji, his family members, friends, children and lovers dedicated to themselves to art and love, carrying the appropriately-colored paper for missives, their clothes obsessing over beauty. The literature that the women of the era produced has at times great power, but, compared to the vitality of the preserved folk songs preserved in "The Dance of the Dust of the Rafters", they can begin to seem wan and attenuated.

[лазарусскйи · Rating 2 out of 5]

These are not translations so much as interpretations, many of them unfounded and frankly laughable. Take poem #482:

いかで　麿
播磨守の童して
飾磨に染むる搗の衣着む

Moriguchi and Jenkins render this (p. 125) as:

That man
that fine young man
who serves the Lord Harima
I want
I want to have
I want to have him
have him
give me
a dress
dyed deep blue,
the kind
the kind they make in Shikama.

(Unfortunately I'm unable to preserve the formatting here.)

Although several poems in Ryojin hisho do in fact display this kind of repetitive nesting of words, this one does not. Why create something that is not there, not even hinted at being there? I can understand the appeal of a free translation, but this is too far off the mark.

As a point of comparison, Gladys Nakahara (2003) translates this poem as:

Somehow, with the help of a child servant of the governor of Harima,
I'd like to wear a Shikama robe dyed in dark blue

Not nearly as fancy, but at least it doesn't try to be something it's not.

Unfortunately Moriguchi and Jenkins' volume is marred by countless similar problems. (Appeals to various buddhas are translated as "My Lord," and at one point "God" is used as a translation of "kami" -- whoops.) It's too bad because this is the most readily available "translation" of Ryojin hisho, a tremendously interesting work (and the only reason for giving this volume two stars).

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this translation. In places it's a little too loose (not close enough to the original Japanese for my scholarly tastes!), but these popular songs are a tough genre to translate, and I think the translators captured the free style of the songs, which stand in great contrast to formal court poetry of the time.

This book made me fall in love with Japanese poetry years and years ago, before I could even read Japanese.