新年明けましておめでとうございます。今年も宜しくお願いします。

Which is to say, “Happy New Year! I ask your continued favor.” Okay, that’s one of those clunky-literal translations I generally try to avoid–but, see, the thing is, the Japanese have a different expression for “Happy New Year” now that it is the new year. I mean, the one above is the different expression from the anticipatory one you use in December. That’s 良いお年をお迎え下さい (clunky-literal translation: “May you greet a good new year”). In the sentence at the top of this post, the 明けまして part is the verb meaning “has dawned” or “[morning] has broken.” It’s the same kanji as is used to mean “bright,” though, so the New Year greeting has always had a sweet hint of “Good morning, sunshine!” to me.

And, in Tokyo, at least, the clouds have lifted, yesterday’s snow/sleet/slush/yuck routine is over (for now), and it’s gorgeous out. Perfect weather for the traditional New Year’s cleaning–which explains why I decided to park myself in front of the computer and check the news and my messages and have now ended up composing a blog post. But never you fear. On this day of new beginnings, surfaces will be washed with hot bleach-water, items will be returned to their rightful drawers, electrical cords and lightbulbs will be checked, and bedding will be sun-fluffed. You know, starting in just a minute or so.

I was looking for a season-appropriate poem to post, but for a dilettante like me, there are problems. The new year according to which the poems of the classical canon were written is in February, so those that are actually appropriate to this point in time have a wistful, year-end feel. Those poems with the sense of a fresh start in the new year are full of references to the beginning of spring, which for obvious reasons feels a bit off.

However, since the Japanese spring in the Heian Period began before the vernal equinox, anyway, I’m going to take the liberty of repairing yet again to the Shinkokin-shu and enlisting the aid of the Princess Shokushi. Actually, I wish all dilemmas in life could be solved by enlisting the aid of the Princess Shokushi–it would make for a much more aesthetically pleasing existence–but we must content ourselves with capitalizing on such opportunities as present themselves. Anyway:

山深み春とも知らぬ松の戸にたえだえかかる雪の玉水

式子内親王

yamabukami / haru tomo shiranu / matsu no to ni / tae-dae kakaru / yuki no tamamizu
Shokushi-Naishinno

Deep in the mountains
My cabin door of pine planks
knows nothing of spring
But melting snow now and then
slides down with a gem-like flash
–The Princess Shokushi

Okay, fine, so there’s actually more cold weather to come in 2005–I told you the poem didn’t fit the solar year. What strikes me as apposite about it (it’s the first of many for the Princess Shokushi in the Shinkokin-shu) is the sense that new beginnings don’t always announce themselves explosively. They creep up on you, the way the year begins with an arc in the sweep of the second hand, just like any other top of the hour.

Once again, Happy New Year to everyone. Special thanks and good wishes to our troops and to the Japanese SDF for working to keep us safe and help others achieve what we have, and to their families for enduring chaotic lives to help them do it.

Everyone seems to be bitching about the return of the cicadas this year; of course, in Japan, the cicada is a major topic of summer-themed traditional poetry, mostly using its voice to evoke solitude or its short life to evoke the 無常 (evanescence, contingency) of This World. Basho Matsuo, the greatest of the haiku poets, wrote several such verses, and one frequently sees them in translation. One of my favorites, though, is this affecting, if less-profound, example, which doesn’t seem to make it into translation often:

いでや我よき布着たり蝉衣

Ide ya / Ware yoki nuno kitari / Semi koromo

Behold me! I wear
the finest garments–the robe
of the cicada

A sucky translation, but hey, it’s the spur of the moment. I’m as drawn to the serious insights of traditional poetry as anyone, but I like the way the great writers such as Basho and Saigyo were able to find something enlightening about a relaxed, playful moment, too. The summer lightness of his simple, rough clothing makes Basho feel like a cicada with translucent wings. An image to savor now. Soon, most of Japan will be like the inside of a dumpling steamer; not even with the aid of air conditioning will the finest linen and cotton feel like anything but a soaked dishrag.

Added at some ungodly hour Monday morning: It occurs to me that, since two people who might be reading this are into sewing, the poem above might have more impact if I make it clear that I think the main way Basho is drawing an analogy between his clothing and the wings/shell of the cicada is through their common texture. The summer robe of a priest would have been made of unfaced, loosely-woven raw cotton or silk. The uneven slubs would have created a texture very much like the veined wings of the cicada, and the folds created by the way it draped might have suggested folded wings, too.

So I chose saigyo, the name of the priest who wrote the poem I used in my domain name, as the login for something or other at some point in configuring my site preferences (or preferring my site configurations, or whatever tech people call it). Now it’s my default e-mail user ID, which is not what I had in mind, but until I can figure out how to fix it, that’s the address I have here (most of you who might see this know me through e-mail at my Hotmail address, anyway, which of course can still be used freely).

As long as I’m misappropriating a major name in Japanese literature as my username, why not spread the pretentiousness around? Another of my favorite poets is Akiko Yosano, who wrote a century ago. At her best, she’s so sexy you can’t stand it:

やは肌のあつき血汐にふれも見でさびしからずや道を説く君

与謝野晶子

yawa hada no / atsuki chishio ni / fure mo mide / sabishikarazu ya / michi wo toku kimi
Yosano Akiko

Having never felt
the hot tide of blood that throbs
beneath this soft skin
even you who seek the Way
must know what you are missing
–Akiko Yosano

I can’t seem to get my English to surge and sweep forward between caesuras the way her Japanese does–Japanese poems have a reputation for stillness and contemplation, but Akiko is often all sensual force coming at you. The fact that tanka are usually printed in one vertical line down the page accentuates the effect. She also married another of the brashly innovative poets of her age. His talent dried up early, so she spent the rest of her life bearing about a hundred of his children and making money to move them around the world to try to get his muse talking to him again. A fascinating woman.

(Darn. I keep forgetting that I haven’t published this.)

Thanks to Dean Esmay for setting this up for me.
I have a feeling that I’m going in and doing shoemaker-type coding by hand when I could be using a template somewhere for a lot of things, but that’s my problem. At first, I was thinking that I’d just leave it plain and unfussy. But in the course of navigating templates, I started to think, I want a gimmicky title! and smirky in-joke link categories! and open comments! and way too many colors from the hexadecimal HTML wheel sprinkled all over the place, too!

There, I’ve said it.

The name, for anyone who wonders, is of course adapted from the phrase “yellow peril,” which is what a dear Japanese friend of mine was going to name his bar when it was about to open a few years ago. Apparently, one reason he chose another name was that he and I became buddies in the interim and he didn’t want to offend me. But I would have thought it was hilarious, so I’m expropriating it.

The domain name is the first line of what may be my very favorite Japanese poem:

岩間とぢし氷も今朝はとけそめて苔の下水みちもとむらむ

西行法師

Iwama todjishi / koori mo kesa ha / tokesomete / Koke no shita mizu / michi motomuramu

Saigyou-houshi

Even the ice that shackles the rocks has begun to melt this morning–the water under the moss will be seeking a pathway.

the Priest Saigyo

It’s the seventh waka in the “Spring” section of one of the court anthologies. April is a bit late in the year for it to be strictly appropriate to the season. But I’ve always, since we were first assigned it in graduate school, loved its economical way of combining ice, moss, and nurturing water–new beginnings that are so fresh they’re not quite ready to occur.