Songs of the Righteous Spirit: “Men of High Purpose” and Their ...

132 MATTHEW FRALEIGHof others’ personal kanshi collections both were important in creatingand perpetuating a sense of shared identity among the shishi. Just ashe composed poems as an act of remembrance to his teacher YoshidaShōin on the first anniversary of his death, so too did he use the kanshiform to solicit the instruction of other men.50 Kanshi compositionwas intimately linked to the formation, clarification, and expression ofpersonal intention. At the same time, it served as a shared practice thatmediated the relations among contemporaneous shishi. Moreover, thispoem demonstrates how kanshi could forge strong bonds beyond thestrictures of direct contact, for even the poetry of other shishi, whomreaders encountered as disembodied texts, played a role in determiningthe frame through which shishi would express their intentions. Inthe second couplet of this poem, Takasugi makes reference to perhapsone of the best-known shishi poems, a quatrain written in 1843 by theChōshū nativist monk Gesshō 月 性 (1817–1858):51男 兒 立 志 出 郷 関學 若 無 成 不 復 還埋 骨 何 期 墳 墓 地人 間 到 處 有 青 山將 東 遊 題 壁As I am about to leave for the east,I inscribed this poem on the wallOne born a man stakes out his ambitions andleaves his hometown behind;Unless his studies are complete, he shall notreturn.Why should he hope to have his bones buriedin a graveyard?In this world, wherever he goes, there will beblue mountains.5250Takasugi Shinsaku zenshū, ed. Hori Tetsusaburō, p. 387. The poem is titled “Senshishōshōbi no saku” 先 師 小 祥 日 作 , dated 10.27.1860, and is signed as the “tearful lament ofhis disciple, Nanju Takasugi.”51There were actually two famous Buddhist monks named Gesshō in late TokugawaJapan; both were active in nativist causes and both died in 1858. The Gesshō who wrotethis line was from Chōshū. The other Gesshō ( 月 照 ), from Kyoto, committed suicidewith Saigō Takamori, though the latter was rescued.52Misaka Keiji 三 坂 圭 治 and Gesshō Kenshōkai 月 性 顕 彰 会 , eds., Ishin no senkaku:Gesshō no kenkyū 維 新 の 先 覚 月 性 の 研 究 (Tokuyama: Matsuno Shoten, 1979), p. 396. Inthis volume, Yoshitomi Haruichi gives other versions of the second line, such as “Unlesshis studies are complete, he shall not return even if he dies” 學 若 不 成 死 不 還 ; as heargues, however, the tonal requirements make the version quoted above more likely.Some have also asserted that the poem is not Gesshō’s own, but one that he corrected forMuramatsu Bunshō 村 松 文 祥 .