Songs of the Righteous Spirit: âMen of High Purposeâ and Their ...

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The shishi and TheirChinese-Language PoetryJAPANESE SONGS OF HIGH PURPOSE 117My focus here is on the Chinese poetry composed by the shishi, but itwould be erroneous to characterize kanshi as their only mode of expression.Several wrote both kanshi and tanka, and a much smaller numberexperimented with hokku and chōka.17 The kanshi by Takasugi Shinsakuon visiting the memorial at Sakurayama is a good example of suchlinguistic multiplicity, for he paired it with a tanka in a piece of calligraphyhe wrote on the same occasion:弔らわる人に入るべき身なりしにとむらう人となるぞはづかしtomurawaruhito ni iru bekimi narishi nitomurau hito tonaru zo hazukashiIt should be our fateto join the ranksof the mourned;how shameful then,to be among the mourners.18As the appearance of this Japanese-language poem alongside Taka sugi’sChinese-language poem on the same piece of paper suggests, the intertextualitybetween these two domains of poetic practice was important.Some poets used the strengths of each form toward different ends:they developed narrative more extensively in the longer kanshi andexplored the subtleties of psychological description in the waka. Eventhose poets who composed predominantly in one language were oftenaware of works written in the other, as two poems, one a kanshi andthe other a tanka, concerning the virtues of personal integrity illustrate.The first, a well-known kanshi by the shishi Saigō Takamori, is:幾歴辛酸志始堅感懷FeelingsHaving endured bitter toils, my intention isnow firm;17A good example of a valedictory hokku is the following by the Mito shishi YamakuniKihachirō 山國喜八郎 (also known as Hyōbu 兵部 ; 1793–1865): “So now it’s time /One last battle / with the ghosts of the underworld” いざさらば冥土の鬼とひといくさ(quoted in Takano, Shishi bungaku, p. 218).18A photograph of this pair of poetic compositions appears in Tominari, TakasugiShinsaku: shi to shōgai, p. 188.
118 MATTHEW FRALEIGH丈夫玉碎恥甎全我家遺法人知否不爲兒孫買美田A true man would be the shattered jewel,ashamed to be the intact tile.We have a tradition in our house—I wonder ifyou’ve heard?Do not buy fine rice paddies for yourdescendants.19The phrase contrasting a fine but shattered jewel (gyokusai) with anintact but unspectacular roof tile can be traced to an episode recordedin one of the Chinese dynastic histories, the Bei Qi shu 北齊書 (Bookof Northern Qi), which was completed in 636.20 The term gyokusai isbest known to us today for the military government’s use of it duringthe Paci fic War as a slogan advocating the most extreme forms of selfsacrificeby the Japanese populace.21 Yet it was probably first throughthe poetry of mid-nineteenth-century shishi that this term becamewidely known. Not only did Saigō use it in this kanshi, but in the worldof waka, Hirano Kuniomi 平野國臣 (also known as Jirō 二郎 ; 1828–1864) is credited with an 1862 tanka alluding to the same adage:碎けても玉となる身はいさぎよし瓦とともに世にあらんよりkudaketemotama to naru mi waisagiyoshikawara to tomo niyo ni aran yoriTo be the jewel,though it may shatteris gallant;far more than living onin the world as a roof tile.2219Sakata, Shishi, pp. 315–16; Sakamoto, p. 49; see also Takano, Shishi bungaku, p. 177.20The episode is recorded in the biography of Yuan Jing’an 元景安 in the Bei Qi shu,41.544. In 550, Gao Yang seized the throne from the Eastern Wei and established himselfas Emperor Wenxuan of the new Northern Qi dynasty. At the time, many of thosewith the Yuan surname (that of the deposed Eastern Wei imperial house) were executed.As a strategy for surviving this purge, Yuan Jing’an proposed assuming the Gao surname.Jing’an’s brother Jinghao opposed such expedience: “A great man would rather be a jewelthough it shatter than a tile that remains intact!” 大丈夫寧可玉碎、不能瓦全 . Jing haowas later executed. Jing’an assumed the surname Gao. The “jewel” may refer specificallyto a fine piece of jade.21On the wartime use of the image as a term to “encourage mass suicide when facedwith a hopeless situation,” see Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, andNationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2002), pp. 114–15, 133, 150.22This poem of Hirano Kuniomi appears in Takano, Shishi bungaku, p. 177. A nearlyidentical tanka is attributed to Maki Izumi 眞木和泉 (1813–1864): “To fall as the jewel /
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