A Japanese miscellany - University of Oregon

96 Japanese Miscellany
and eventually, after much further research, he
was able to discover only about a dozen such
poems in tanha.
The reason for this must be sought in the
old poetical conventions. Japanese thirty-one-
syllable poetry is composed according to rules
that have been fixed for hundreds of years.
These rules require that almost every subject
treated shall be considered in some relation to
one of the seasons. And this should be done in
accordance with certain laws of grouping, — long-
established conventions of association, recognized
both in painting and in poetry: for example,
the nightingale should be mentioned, or por-
trayed, together with the plum-tree ; the sparrow,
with the bamboo; the cuckoo, with the moon;
frogs, with rain ; the butterfly, with flowers ; the
bat, with the willow-tree. Every Japanese child
knows something about these regulations. Now,
it so happens that no such relations have been
clearly fixed for the dragon-fly in tanka-^otixy
— though in pictures we often see it perched on
the edge of a water-bucket, or upon an ear
of ripened rice. Moreover, in the classification
of subject-groupings for poetry, the dragon-fly
is not placed among mushi (" insects " — by
,