Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 148

It is observable that at this epoch the sovereigns of Japan had not yet begun to affect the sacred seclusion which, in later ages, became characteristic of them. It is true that, after ascending the throne, they no longer led their troops in war, though they did so as Imperial princes. But in other respects they lived the lives of ordinary men—joining in the chase, taking part in banquets, and mixing freely with the people. As illustrating this last fact a strange incident may be cited. One day the Emperor Yuryaku visited the place where some carpenters were at work and observed that one of them, Mane, in shaping timber with an axe, used a stone for ruler but never touched it with the axe. "Dost thou never make a mistake and strike the stone?" asked the monarch. "I never make a mistake," replied the carpenter. Then, to disturb the man's sang-froid, Yuryaku caused the ladies-in-waiting (uneme) to dance, wearing only waist-cloths. Mane watched the spectacle for a while, and on resuming his work, his accuracy of aim was momentarily at fault. The Emperor rebuked him for having made an unwarranted boast and handed him over to the monono-be for execution. After the unfortunate man had been led away, one of his comrades chanted an impromptu couplet lamenting his fate, whereat the Emperor, relenting, bade a messenger gallop off on "a black horse of Kai" to stay the execution. The mandate of mercy arrived just in time, and when Mane's bonds were loosed, he, too, improvised a verse:

"Black as the night

"Was the horse of Kai.

"Had they waited to

"Saddle him, my life were lost

"O, horse of Kai!"

The whole incident is full of instruction. A sovereign concerning himself about trivialities as petty as this pretext on which he sends a man to death; the shameful indignity put upon the ladies-in-waiting to minister to a momentary whim; the composition of poetry by common carpenters, and the ride for life on a horse which there is not time to saddle. It is an instructive picture of the ways of Yuryaku's Court.

In truth, this couplet-composing proclivity is one of the strangest features of the Yamato race as portrayed in the pages of the Records and the Chronicles. From the time when the fierce Kami, Susanoo, put his thoughts into verse as he sought for a place to celebrate his marriage, great crises and little crises in the careers of men and women respectively inspire couplets. We find an Emperor addressing an ode to a dragon-fly which avenges him on a gad-fly; we find a prince reciting impromptu stanzas while he lays siege to the place whither his brother has fled for refuge; we find a heartbroken lady singing a verselet as for the last time she ties the garters of her lord going to his death, and we find a sovereign corresponding in verse with his consort whose consent to his own dishonour he seeks to win.

Yet in the lives of all these men and women of old, there are not many other traces of corresponding refinement or romance. We are constrained to conjecture that many of the verses quoted in the Records and the Chronicles were fitted in after ages to the events they commemorate. Another striking feature in the lives of these early sovereigns is that while on the one hand their residences are spoken of as muro, a term generally applied to dwellings partially underground, on the other, we find more than one reference to high towers. Thus Yuryaku is shown as "ordering commissioners to erect a lofty pavilion in which he assumes the Imperial dignity," and the Emperor Nintoku is represented as "ascending a lofty tower and looking far and wide" on the occasion of his celebrated sympathy with the people's poverty.