BAKUMATSU
AND MEIJI UNDERGROUND VERSE FORMS.....
DEAN BRINK
Saint Martin’s University, US
Read from top down, Meiji means “enlightened
rule,”
..........................................it may
be,
but from bottom up, “no way do you rule,”
..........................................don’t you
see!
上からは明治だなどといふけれど治明と下からは読む
This essay examines the historical
parameters for writing satirical verse during the late
bakumatsu and early Meiji period.
Focusing specifically on comic haiku (senryū), graffiti verse (rakusho),
and popular songs (hayariuta), it explores correspondences of class and
genre during this period of ideological transformation from the last years of
the Tokugawa Shogunate to the modern nation of Japan. Reading representative
examples of these anonymous verses, I attempt to analyze these verse genres and
subgenera in their historical contexts to identify their ideological positioning
relative to current social issues. Allowing a better understanding of the
ideological uses associated with specific verse forms and conventions, these
verses, ostensibly rooted in protest and satire, provide detailed sketches of
changes in the ideological contexts within which they were written. One can see
most dramatically in comic haiku
of the mid Meiji period a transformation from being protest verse to being
mildly satirical verse in confluence with broader national policies and
ideological trends.
The
Place of Satirical and Protest Verse Forms in
Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan
One of the recurrent themes in satirical verses
of this period is how to solve widespread problems and build a great nation
comparable to European nations. These verses demonstrate the range of debates in
the process of this transformation, and are ideologically productive, not merely
reflecting tenuously established ideologies. These verses detail evidence of
class-specific accommodations made as writers surmised and tested potentially
acceptable ideological forms for generating broadly tolerated beliefs and
behaviors among the various existing and nascent classes.
It is not an exaggeration to say that local
ideological testing of modes of integrative and centralizing enunciation took
place in verse. With the complexity of the relation of poetry and nation being
compounded by contested class and subject-positions in Japan, poetry provides
scholars one opportunity to review the origins of the modern Japanese nation and
its early working ideologies across classes. Popular songs,
comic haiku,
satirical waka (kyōka), satirical Chinese poems (kyōshi),
as well as graffiti verse and variants of all these forms, were modes of
expression that were readily adapted to and even thrived in the changing lexical
and social terrains of the bakumatsu and early Meiji period. Comic haiku
have the distinction of gracing the front pages of most major newspapers in
Japan even today. However, most of the other forms have disappeared, with the
exception of popular songs (hayariuta), which have evolved into
enka (Japanese popular folk songs) and pop music (kayōkyoku,
ryūkōka, or poppusu), and graffiti verse (rakusho), which has
become simple, largely non-versified rakugaki (graffiti).
The examples presented below demonstrate how
the ironies and conflicts surrounding the socio-political and cultural upheavals
that define the period did not go unnoticed by any of the classes, and how verse
became a tool for shrewdly shaping and amending positions with regard to the
nation’s state of affairs as well as the symbolic characterizations of the
“nation.” From the crises of the 1860s through the changes of the Civilization
and Enlightenment period, the social order was extremely unstable in terms of
political leadership, economics, legal codes, accepted cultural practices, and
foreign relations. Communities across Japan were shaken by inflation and
shortages, fighting by samurai, humiliation and the threat of increased coercion
at the hands of foreign powers wielding gunboat diplomacy (as they had seen used
in China).
While there were internal economic and
agricultural problems, a Darwinian sense of world history (within and without
Japan) threatened and challenged Japan to compete in the “struggle of the
fittest,” so that a sense of national danger would become integral to an
intoxicating patriotism that developed. Even while Japan was still vulnerable,
pompous declarations of greatness and military might were common in Japan as in
other modernizing nations during this age of imperialism. The gap between the
precariousness of the nation vis-à-vis foreign as well as internal threats and
the language of grandeur proliferating during the Civilization and Enlightenment
movement (Bunmei kaika) became the wellspring of jokes in satirical
verse.
In this state of affairs, as in any society
experiencing major disruptions and changes, current events and discursive aims
dictated style as well as subject matter. For example, waka, which were
steeped in a tradition based on a strictly limited poetic lexicon and
standardized range of topics (though there were many changes within this
tradition), were incapable of immediately treating current events involving so
many changes on such a broad and material scale. Therefore, simply the attempt
to engage new topics in
waka (even in the unorthodox haikai) would necessitate lapsing into
the “vulgar” or comic verse style such as is found in satirical waka and
comic haiku.
Yet waka composition and appreciation continued to be one of the most
ideologically potent symbols of accomplished status and sovereignty for former
samurai, scholars, the titular aristocracy of the court, and others. Comic
haiku, graffiti verse and popular songs on the other hand, constituted
the frontlines in the use of verse to garner political support or public
sympathy for any given issue at a grass-roots level. Comic, satirical and
protest verses tentatively drew together diverse discourses (especially high and
low, producing their comic effects) and contributed to the establishment of a
political consciousness at odds with the elitist and didactic policies promoted
by Meiji government offices.
Comic Haiku in an Age of an “All-encompassing
Truth”: Discursive Images from the Civilization and Enlightenment Movement to
the Sino-Japanese War
As documentation of the forces that impacted
the fall of the Shogunate, comic haiku provide historical references by which we
may glimpse the popular reaction to issues of the day. Comic haiku explore the
imagery of public discourse by introducing amusing associations that usually
make reference to unstated assumptions, and in this way expose certain
ideological values. George Lakoff and Mark Turner provide a compelling analysis
of how words are used in the context of supporting arrays of metaphors and
associations within linguistic communities. Their work shows how words are
framed, used and interpreted with intertextual dependency on previously formed
contexts. Discussion of the metaphorical backdrop for idiomatically sound
enunciations in this approach provides a means for understanding the formation
of ideological expectations. Manipulating words in all their metaphorical
potential already assumes the potential for imbuing certain words with
evaluative connotations and establishing discursive contexts by which writers
jockeyed for influence.
Comic haiku are ideological in the most
specific sense of being enunciations both communicating within a limited
historical context and reflecting, in their condensed form, the relative
importance of one discourse in terms of another—in their values, paradigms, ways
of speaking about certain topics, and metaphors employed. Comic haiku are
a great genre for demythologizing the assumed priority of one discursive context
or set of issues over another. The way they do this is through the proliferation
of puns which are exploited for this purpose of foregrounding such divisions of
attention in comic haiku. Puns function as fulcrums for resituating ideological
givens in terms of subtexts, “misunderstandings,” and displaced reasons for the
occurrence of observed events. The satire of current events in comic haiku
involves staging words in ways that expose ideological tensions, often by
recasting decisions and actions by the ruling class in terms of common, local
points of reference.
In the process of unifying Japan as a modern
nation, factions of former classes competed for legitimate voices and authority
in printed texts of all types. Questions regarding Japan’s relation to the world
and history on a global scale had been on at least merchants’ minds since
Perry’s arrival in the 1850s, if not from the 1840s when news of the Opium War
spread.
As a sense of shared stakes and responsibilities (a national consciousness) grew
during the early decades of the Meiji period, there were diminished
possibilities for relying on an authoritative and serious “other” against which
parody and punning could be effortlessly sustained. Yet comic haiku remain to
this day a means of lampooning specific events in their historical contexts
(indeed, they are often indecipherable without such knowledge).
Many graffiti verse (rakusho, which can
include comic haiku) and most comic haiku authors found value in a process of
writing and distribution that characterized hardship, unfair treatment, and
official scandal in their terms as commoners or disgruntled lower
samurai.
These songs of protest and verse tracts from below developed ironically from a
position of subservience and dependency (on the good will of the sword-bearing
warrior class, at least those of higher rank) to speak out in spite of their
lack of political position or representation. Such verse engendered a
transgressive energy and means of enunciation that could be propagated, enjoyed,
and potentially create bonds of solidarity. Though one would be hard pressed to
claim that late Tokugawa verse cultures of the lower classes could have
developed into a revolutionary discourse, they certainly created in their
example the potential for all oppositional parties (in relation to the de facto
Tokugawa ruling government) to draw on the idiom of these “voices” of protest,
whether of sarcasm, dire urgency, or righteousness. This point helps explain how
popular songs became such a potent tool in the Freedom and People’s Rights
Movement (peaking in the early 1880s), which the government would censor while
publishing its own verse to stage its own positions as it faced an increasing
threat of revolution “from below.”
The gap between the Shogunate ideology and the
tentative Civilization and Enlightenment ideology (of “civilizing”:
socio-economic Westernization) became the driving irony for many comic haiku and
humorous writings. There was a tendency to juxtapose extreme differences between
life in the former Edo period and in the new era. In this way, comic haiku can
be seen as extending a process of articulating attacks against the former
Shogunate and local officials, but now the form was employed to resist the new
government’s policies, including the imposition of many changes. The following
comic haiku displays a commoner’s view of reapportioning work and leisure time
allocations after the dismantling of classes. Former peasants and merchants now
supposedly would have had time to write poetry on a samurai tilling the fields,
rather than only the reverse situation.
Rustic
samurai: not so much poetasting
as
mucking in the paddies.
田舎武士、今は詩よりも田を作り
Much of the satire and irony derives from the fact that a poem is being written
by a newly empowered commoner. Moreover, the character for “poetry” (詩,
shi) referred primarily to poetry written in Chinese, which were composed
almost solely by samurai and former samurai (or educated rich land-owning
peasants and merchants who emulated them). The commoner now writes this comic
haiku so that part of the irony (of depicted incongruity) derives from
the reversal of their places as peasant and warrior and in this instance the
ranking of their preferred forms of poetry: a vulgar form has supplanted the
exalted Chinese poetry of the old guard. This typical comic haiku
of the Civilization and Enlightenment period dryly illustrates an ironic
reversal that delivers its satirical punch with a degree of diachronic
complication that undermines its comic gesturing. Rather than being a fixed form
reflecting a predictable routine (though this surely could also be argued by way
of a rhetorical analysis of many examples) each comic haiku refers to a specific
situation which is examined ironically from a historical perspective.
Satire depends on a relationship of
inferiority to those that the verse is satirizing (the samurai), even if it is
only a rhetorical inferiority. Yet the very act of writing in this instance
suggests seriousness over levity, regardless of the form. There is an implied
continued capitulation to the will of the samurai in beginning the poem with an
address to the samurai, but it is a parody of the old system of names and ranks:
“rustic warrior.” While the former status quo has been discounted, it remains a
point of reference in negotiating the current social order and conventional
behaviors.
The irony in this case evokes a point of view
that is
not in a subordinate position in relationship to the prevailing thought of
the day, but merely in terms of the past common sense, before the current age of
the Enlightenment. The commoner stands level with, if not gazing with contempt
at, the toiling samurai. Writing a poem about samurai no longer writing poems is
a transitory event that merely underscores an ironic change in society, not
hilarity amid alienation. The larger irony here is that the satirical bite is
diminished to the degree the relationship is no longer “from below” but rather
“from above” or at least on roughly level terms (rather than written in vain
protestation). This combination of a satirical shadow and reflective, perhaps
modern irony makes this comic haiku especially rich as a historical and literary
record of ideological change.
Satire of this period played upon ironic
juxtapositions within the confines of the increasingly influential place of
historical consciousness in Japanese society. The fall of the Shogunate and the
opening of the closed country created a context in which historical
consciousness came to the fore in people’s daily lives, and the juxtaposition of
former and present class divisions in a way undercuts the superior position of
the comic haiku poet by reminding the reader that the situation used to be
different and that humorous instability is part of the present social situation.
However, the primary tone here is one of quiet exuberance. Such diachronic
references to change form the division by which the ironic gap is opened up.
Comic haiku are usually used to express
grievances in a way that does not suggest aspirations to exact control within
the socio-political context. As postmodern theorist
Linda Hutcheon points out in her study of parody, satire is characterized by a
“moral and social” focus, which is “ameliorative in its intention.”
Comic haiku engage in such satire from the point of view of the
cooperative commoner and is associated with non-revolutionary protest and
commentary from below.
At the same time, the ironic reminders of the
former Shogunate can be seen as transforming nostalgia into a means of finding
pleasure in the rapid deterioration of faith in the “good old days” (which posed
a threat of a counter-restoration, a return to the shogunal system). Yet we
should not overemphasize this delight in dismantling the old regime, since many
people were irritated by all the changes, the way that small details of daily
life were cursed as “evil customs” to be purged from the new society. Comic
haiku written during the Civilization and Enlightenment period typically reflect
mistrust of the status of the historical present as the government was framing
it: as a great “enlightenment” and opening up to the world. People of all walks
of life were called upon to make sacrifices in terms of the way they lived their
lives then. Largely because of the complex minutiae of laws and customs that
governed former hierarchical relations, the new and also elaborate Victorian
codes of law and fashions superceding them created a comical situation. Thus
comic haiku, popular songs, kyōka and kyōga
(humorous pictures) can be seen to boom during the Civilization and
Enlightenment period. Nowhere could lampooning find a better home than in
the juxtaposition of the old and new.
Other comic haiku comically represent them as
formerly great lovers, suggesting that the practical concerns of the Meiji
shizoku
(former samurai) had deprived them of the leisure time they once had for
satiating their sexual appetites. The above example suggests the samurai of old
were “nothing but” makers of poetry, and thus “good for nothing,” a prevalent
opinion in an age of internal peace and external threat that required bombs, not
swords. The once at least nominally sovereign class had had guaranteed stipends
as well as status, and would have attracted the attention of lovers and
mistresses, but now the times had changed.
With
their sweet memories of when
they
stood tall with their spears, old samurai.
槍立てた昔恋しき老士族
“Standing tall” (yaritateta) combines the more literal “doing great
things” with a secondary meaning, “having sex.” Yari also means “spear,”
“to do,” “to have sex,” and is another name for the male organ. Tateta is
the past tense form of tateru,
“to erect.” The translation “old samurai” collapses “old” (rō) and
“former samurai” (shizoku).
A minor theme that appears in the period
between the new and the old regime is that of Buddhist karma and previous lives.
One comic haiku simply states:
The
old Shogunate, the past
life
of former samurai.
旧幕の時が士族の前世界
As
it would have been understood that the times were now difficult for former
samurai, this comic haiku implies that samurai can now only live in the past.
Also implied is a sense that “what goes around comes around,”as if they were
paying dues for their past laziness. A pleasurable sense of avenged inequity and
reversed privilege is suggested.
Not all such comic haiku focused directly on
the samurai’s reversal of fortunes. There are many examples of more cryptic (and
historically specific) comic haiku that pun on names and words associated with
current events. Because the famous and widely (but not universally, at this
time) revered Saigō Takamori had died taking the lead in the failed Nansei War
(1877), the final uprising by former samurai to threaten the integrity of the
Meiji state, he was satirically immortalized in such verses as the following.
While
the average potato passes as gas
Saigō
becomes a star.
芋は屁となり西郷は星となり
This comic haiku assumes readers had a familiarity with the immediate
association in popular usage of Satsuma and potatoes—inhabitants of this
province were referred to as “potatoes,” and here
imo also carries the sense of “ordinary soldiers.” The vanity of the
grandiose ideology of the samurai in an age of practicality also seems to be an
inspiration.
A literary device of particular interest in the
context of understanding comic poetry in this period is keiku (警句),
a concise condemnation of the principles of some novel and exceptional idea.
It emphasizes the separation of the parodic composition from the world of
what is being parodied.
We see this figure in much of the satire of the Civilization and Enlightenment
period, in all three senses of keiku mentioned by Yanagisawa: treating
something as strange in condensed, penetrating expression; overturning social
appearances through novel, unexpected phrasing; and paradoxical expression.
One can refer to multiple literary devices,
which should be regarded as descriptive categories that provide a shorthand
means of referring to recurrent patterns in writings, not overall as something
of concern to readers or even writers of these forms. For instance, in the wake
of the Meiji Restoration, new Western and established Confucian abstractions and
ideals appeared in comic haiku, reflecting their use by the government. They are
often rearranged in creative combinations, providing much material for comic
haiku in the parody of the rhetoric and pompous language of empire. They drew on
parody and satire in pre-Meiji literature, employing various figures, including
modoki (satirical imitation or mockery, especially of major figures or lead
actors), chakashi (satirizing something serious), ugachi (a
cutting comment or “dig”), mitate (in satirical works, enigmatically
depicting the object of satire in terms of something else), and mojiri
(changing lyrics in parts of a song, so as to make it humorous or allegorical).
These satirical figures tend to remain indirect, mocking and parodying putative
authorities.
In the world of the Civilization and
Enlightenment movement, which was already predicated on a severance from the
immediate past of Tokugawa society, the allure of entering a liminal world and
compounding its duality with parody would have been hard to resist for a
generation raised on the playful, popular Edo fiction (gesaku shōsetsu)
and comic waka
and comic haiku verses. Takahashi defines parody (parodi) in Japan in
particular in terms of modoki, which he lists as having the following
senses and functions, varying according to historical examples at hand: a
“translation” imitating an original, canonical text; a vulgarization of
something sacred; criticism; and comic laughter.
In the 1870s the past era itself became the text to use in the process of
parodying the changing present.
The cutting comment (ugachi) can be seen
in the following verse, which also exhibits modoki as it imitates the
voice of authority, and chakashi in that it satirizes something serious.
The juxtaposition of the old and new not only extends to the Shogunate and the
Meiji government, but to cross-references between ancient
Kojiki myths and historical representations of the emperor, and European
monarchies and ancient civilizations (Judaic, Greek, and Roman). Some examples
of how abstractions from the old regime were applied satirically to pending
situations suggest the fine line between elevating grand absolutes from various
literary and historical contexts in the name of making Japan into a great,
modernized nation, and the collapse of such abstractions as seemingly hopeless
dreams. Parody in comic haiku thus drew attention to the fragility of such feats
of the imagination that underlie society at this time:
Dispense the medicine of benevolence
and
root out the country’s ills.
仁の施薬に国病のねを絶やし
Here the lampooner questions how the Meiji
government has played the “tennō card” in tandem with Confucian ideals.
While not mentioning the emperor per se, the use of
jin or “benevolence” (on the part of the emperor to his loyal subjects)
in this sardonic manner clearly implies the imperial institution. Though the
emperor was now an actual rather than titular ruler, the language of Confucian
rule, applied to the new context, would still have been broadly seen as a
strategic attempt to justify the right to govern with smooth words. Such
political subtexts are what make comic haiku capable of being, in Arai Akira’s
reading of comic haiku,
cutting, sharp-witted, and “intuitive.”
For Arai, comic haiku aim at “ugachi” or “opening a hole,” “digging up
something not visible on the surface. In other words, it is that which renders
an interior visible.” Ugachi (a “dig”) involves the exposing of
weaknesses in a person, or contradictions in society. Without becoming
completely “serious,” it is both ironic and satirical.
In short, by entertaining irony in evident multiple perspectives, comic haiku
provide a means for closely examining ideologically contentious language in the
process of defining the new nation.
Comic haiku from around the time of the
Civilization and Enlightenment movement emphasize distinctions between
the new and old, often with a critical eye on the coercion implicit in many of
the new laws. Many comic haiku imply that the whole redefinition of a
society as based on “civilization and enlightenment” is itself a sham, and that
distinctions between the old and new are only superficial matters of parroting
the jargon of the Civilization and Enlightenment movement and aping the
mannerisms perceived to be common to the people of the Great Powers.
The
bad old ways lead the Way
to
enlightenment.
旧弊は開化の道の教師なり
The
masters who wield the rod seem to take the form of constant prohibition and
negation, so that all the new ways are a purging of the past ways, and to become
“enlightened” one need only know the evil ways as those things one should
eschew. Similar, self-explanatory examples include:
In
perfume catch a whiff
an
inch of enlightenment.
香水で一寸開化を匂はせる
With
newspapers our mouths
get
used to enlightenment and progress.
新聞屋、開化進歩が口に馴れ
Even
the parrots laugh!
mimicking the crude Enlightenment.
オウムも笑ふ口真似の生開化
In the
fledgling Enlightenment
even
the tadpoles seem like fish.
生開化お玉約子も魚ぶり
This last comic haiku
interestingly associates the grandiose “Enlightenment” with being a fish, while
emphasizing that it is a project “in the works” (nama) so that at present
one must deceive oneself in order to see great beginnings as consummated dreams
(tadpoles as fish). Similarly, the middle two comic haiku lampoon the rote
mouthing of the buzzwords of the day, and the first one pokes fun at the minor
contribution of wearing perfume (in Victorian fashion) in elevating the nation.
The comic haiku on the newspapers satirizes the ideologizing power of the
newspaper institution itself, as it creates a closed circuit of repeated
information flows.
The following is based on an ironic discrepancy
between the stated objectives of the Civilization and Enlightenment movement and
how these aims appear to the broad spectrum of society.
In the
world of Enlightenment
one
looks up with everything rising.
開化の世、上見て及ぶ事ばかり
How
enjoyable this world of civilization
where
we note all our own faults.
己が非を見る文明の世は楽し
The
punster in the latter comic haiku frames “civilization” (bunmei) as a
humbling arena within which one learns to assimilate new critical concerns. One
becomes hypercritical of one’s own inadequacies, especially, it is implied,
since adults would have been “above” such products of an age now held in
disdain.
The dry irony is in part derived from pleasure
taken in this process of developing a critical sensibility that conforms to the
new order all the while expressing a degree of resistance. There is an awareness
of an intrinsic masochism in participating in this “progress,” and pleasure to
be found in its lampooning. There is a paradoxical empowerment of a new critical
consciousness and coercive framing of critical propositions in comic haiku
discourse. What is being sounded out in such comic haiku includes both
questions regarding the impossibility of following the proposed ideology and the
difficulty in resisting it. The irresistible joy of empowerment, in the very act
of composing these witty comic haiku, certainly overshadows their criticism of
the proliferation of prohibitions.
More contextually specific comic haiku
record various reactions to new laws issued in Tokyo and in rural areas in 1872
and 1873 (Meiji 5 and 6).
There were comic haiku on the prohibition against urination in public:
Wanting to pee on the roadside,
the
feelings of the fallen samurai.
路傍へ小便、落武者の心持ち
When
you hear the footsteps [of the police]
stop
the water pump.
靴音を聞いてポンプの水を止め
Five
sen for relieving myself,
a
ticket to pee.
小便の料を五銭でべんしょうし
With a
furtive look, peeing
I see
the nightstick and shrink.
見廻して小便、棒をみて縮じみ
If we emphasize the discursive practices that
were sustained beyond the bakumatsu context and into the Civilization and
Enlightenment period, we see continuity in these lampooning practices. Yet if we
underscore the changes in the discursive context due to the new government and
society, we find the relations between punster poets, the government, and
broader general audiences have been altered. The new controls over the actions
and bodies of Meiji subjects stimulated a vigilant, continued use of comic haiku,
which both contested the new laws and were a means of realizing some benefit
from the dismal prohibitions, if only by generating fodder for an economy of
laughter and pleasure as compensation. In this way comic haiku can be seen as
part of the naturalization of new ideological expectations; they are a continued
source of entertainment derived from converting increased social restraints into
opportunities for disrupting the language of the new order.
Comic haiku were written in reaction to
government demands to make sacrifices of labor for grand projects, to increase
production, to redefine established customs, and to establish a “blood tax” as
military conscription was called by farmers. Many comic haiku employ the imagery
of being “ready to explode,” and comic haiku beginning specifically with
“oppression” (assei) are abundant and varied, as in the following:
The
bricks [of the Ginza] glisten with
the
oily sweat of the people.
人民のあぶらで煉瓦よく光り
Reaction to oppression—
steam
boiling the lid off.
圧制の反動、蓋を煮上がる湯
Such comic haiku on government oppression often include representations of the
public reaction to it as pushing the populace toward a great uprising.
Inspired by the ideas of democracy and human
rights, Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, some of these anonymous comic
haiku combine the sense of indignation found in peasant protest songs and
graffiti verse of the bakumatsu period with the wit of the above
Civilization and Enlightenment period comic haiku. This major antigovernment
movement was originally founded by disgruntled former samurai who sought to
establish a constitutional and parliamentarian government. Within the materials
I have procured, by far the most common image is built around the pun of ken
(rights or authority) and ken (sword). In songs calling for people’s
rights, especially from Meiji 10 (1877), we find comic haiku such as:
Undo
the sword from your obi
and trade it in
for
the freewheeling force of rights.
圧制の反動力は噴水器
With
the abolition of swords
commoners hold the rights (ken).
廃剣にしたで平民けん（剣・権）を持ち
In a
world where hips have lost their swords (ken)
people
sprout rights (ken).
腰に剣ない世で民に権が出来
After
the abolition of swords
they
polish people’s rights in Tosa.
廃剣の後、民権を土佐で磨き
A
world under a despotic government
puts
rust on the sword of people’s rights.
専制な世は民権にさびが付き
These numerous comic haiku are playfully
predicated on the fact that it was after the order abolishing the wearing of
swords (ken) that the call for people’s rights (minken) came to
flourish.
Tosa, in the fourth verse, was a hotbed of People’s Rights movement activities.
Former samurai there, notably Ueki Emori and Itagaki Taisuke, became local and
national leaders of the movement.
The most common motif in these comic haiku is the continued, somewhat parodic
repetition of ritualistic actions associated with wearing and caring for swords,
here transmuted into a concern with human rights. In the bakumatsu
period, the sword was not only a symbol of samurai sovereignty, but also of
their laziness and uselessness (first as “warriors” during a time of peace, then
in the face of the more advanced Western armories). Thus there was an underlying
sense of justice in commoners gaining rights while doing the work by which
society functions; this is the meaning of “With the abolition of swords /
commoners hold rights.” Furthermore, “In a world where hips have lost their
swords (ken) / people sprout rights (ken),” suggests the power
vacuum all people, samurai included, would fill as the privilege to bear swords
was exchanged (in the ideology of the People’s Rights movement) for inherent
(natural) rights for all. It is from the perspective of someone who became an
impassioned activist that the author of the final comic haiku above writes: Not
to take advantage of the new, still intangible sword/rights would expose Japan
to the danger of being “A world under a despotic government / [that] puts rust
on the sword of people’s rights.”
There were also comic haiku critical of the
Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, often labeling it “wagamama”(selfish):
Freedom to follow your every whim
will
never amount to people’s rights.
我侭の自由、民権にはならず
Stretch out your limbs and go to work!
It’s a
free workaday world [now].
手も足も伸ばして稼ぐは自由
Though the first example sides with the opposition to the Freedom and People’s
Rights movement, the second is less clear-cut. Its “dig” (ugachi) could
be against laziness, celebrating the advent of a self-determined working world,
but more ironically it cuts against the ideal of freedom, underscoring that it
too is a call to work.
After this movement had been severely
restricted and subject to censorship, after the elites in power established a
constitution for an imperialist government, and after local governments were
reformed so that each community had a “little emperor” (shō-tennō) in it,
the movement died out.
As all of the political parties were nationalist,
it is not surprising in this climate that one finds a growing abundance of
nationalist comic haiku.
Comic haiku employing the phrase “Yamato-damashii”
or “Japanese spirit (of old)” flourished in the periods of the Sino-Japanese and
Russo-Japanese wars.
“Yamato-damashii” is an abstract word used to arouse patriotic
emotions by associating it with its associated manifestations, often images of
military prowess or national supremacy.
The comic haiku form is well equipped to lampoon the overuse of this jingoistic
buzzword. Yet as comic haiku were usually based on current events or discourse
of the day, and depended upon resituating these in droll juxtapositions, it is
not always easy to distinguish mere observations from witty associations without
referring to historical details. Examples of comic haiku built around the
patriotic jargon of “Yamato-damashii” show that virtually
anything in Japan can be included under this rubric and identified as its
manifestation. The humor in such convocations of images is obvious; part of
their entertaining value in the Meiji period stemmed from expectations that yet
another everyday, insignificant item would be ironically placed in the
glorifying light of the Yamato-damashii. Some of these comic haiku
seem to be mere citations or snapshots of uses of the word Yamato-damashii,
and it is often unclear whether their humor or “amusement” is derived more
from a critical mode or a celebratory nationalism. For example:
As
pupils to eyeballs,
the
Japanese spirit to the globe.
眼中の瞳、地球に大和魂
The imagery is outlandish, suggesting the
Japanese spirit is the overseer and inspirational axis on which the earth finds
its moral bearing. It presumably mimics the nationalism of contemporary
chauvinists. It must be interpreted as both parodying the absurdity of such
national megalomania, and of tacitly enjoying such chauvinist discourse as a
source of entertainment.
The
Japanese spirit bound up in two words:
a
rainbow of loyalty and righteousness.
忠と義の二字に縛り合う大和魂
Here “Yamato-damashii”
is represented as the synthesizing entity by which Confucian values of the old
regime are reified. One anachronism (Japanese spirit) is shown being used to
justify another (loyalty and righteousness).
The following is more openly wary of such associative leaps of logic:
The righteousness of those
united under the throne [like the sworn brothers of Ryūbi, Kanu and Chōhi, of
the Three Warring States],
and not to mention the
dreary Japanese spirit of those united under [our] throne.
桃下の義、愚か桐下の大和魂
As
this is a comic haiku and all puns are within the realm of possibility, we are
compelled to read the oroka
in both senses of “not to mention” and of “insipid.” Along with the allusion
to the vows made by the brothers of the Three Warring States, it is a good
example of an author drawing a fine line between eloquent praise and mockery.
From the time of the Sino-Japanese War,
Yamato-damashii
became a buzzword to express elation at having overcome the threat of
colonization and embarking on an aggressive pursuit of Japan’s own empire. From
being controlled by unequal treaties and necessarily reactive, living in the
shadow of resentment and condescension, Japan was at a point at which it could
now stage its own plans for seizing control of surrounding territories and
markets. Even after the insult of the Triple Intervention, the language of
patriotism and nationalism would increasingly counter the residual threat of the
West. Examples of comic haiku in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War suggest how
pliable “Yamato-damashii” was, applicable to anything with
chauvinist or violent overtones vis-à-vis the foreign:
Cannons forward on the double—
such
is the Japanese spirit
大砲の真［っ］先掛（駈）けは大和魂
What
no one can replicate overseas—
the
Japanese spirit.
外国で模造は出来ぬ大和魂
Preserving national purity:
the
Japanese spirit of the troops.
国粋の保存、兵士の大和魂
These works may be read as braggadocio
compensating for insults in foreign affairs and reflecting actual military
battles; however they can also be read as parodying the figurative move that
uses “Yamato-damashii” as a form of bound potentiality, since
Japan was still attempting to have the unequal treaties with the Great Powers
annulled and reverse blanket racism against non-caucasian people. In this way,
there is a continuation of the rhetorical pattern found in Freedom and People’s
Rights period comic haiku on “oppression” (assei) above, whereby the
language of threatening innuendo compensated for insufficient political power.
The following comic haiku illustrates the
expanding range of the form. It employs irony of a sort made possible by the
successful attainment of overseas territories after the first Sino-Japanese War.
The black humor emerges from a mixture of the new national consciousness and
traditional satirical humor, which was most often used to attack rulers and
their policies or to lampoon scandals. Here the shrewd wit emboldens chauvinism
in the subjects of the common Japanese state. The images of “strong country” and
“real estate agency,” identifying strength and wealth, recall the earlier slogan
“rich country, strong army,” employed at a time when Japan’s own sovereignty was
being threatened by colonizing European nations. By presenting these as
productive associations in “natural” juxtaposition, a Japanese upon reading it
would have discovered the achievement of that slogan’s goal in the unified image
of a strong nation that demonstrates its military and financial strength by its
maintenance of control over Taiwan.
The
real estate broker of a great power:
the
Japanese spirit.
強国の不動産なり大和魂
The following are of interest in that they
recognize
gunka as part of a plan to instill militarism in children. They are part of
the preparation of weapons of revenge against their nemises Russia, Germany and
France who, in the Triple Intervention, were seen as having robbed Japan of its
victory in the field of empire-making and colonization by forcing it to return
the Liaotung Peninsula to China.
Military songs even for the toddlers—
the
wrath of the Japanese spirit.
小児も軍歌、敵がいの日本魂
In
lullabies as in martial songs,
the
rousing beat of marching feet.
子守まで勇む軍歌の足拍子（アシビョウシ)
Such verses mock the shrewd if not thoroughly
mean-spirited appropriation of young children as pawns in plans of colonial
expansion. Such indoctrination is at the core of the ideological: entrusting to
youth, who look up to their teachers for guidance, ideas that they themselves as
adults may believe in or rebel against. But, the issues are firmly planted in
their minds, becoming part of their ideological common sense by which they
situate themselves ethically so that militarism sill more likely to ring
plausible to them.
A qualitative shift in the role of satirical
verse is related to the identification of the individual with the interests of
the nation. We have seen above how comic haiku evolved from the late Bakumatsu
to the mid Meiji period, from forms of satire largely removed from voicing
public policy to more participatory forms. In this way comic haiku began to
contribute to national ideological centralization and unity rather than remain a
marginal “shaking fist.” Now, indicated by such slogans such as “rich country,
strong army” (fukoku kyōhei) and “produce and industrialize” (shokusan
kōgyō), each citizen was expected to think in terms of the state, and with
deference to the emperor, one of major ideologically significant institutions
managed by the centralized government (the educational system was another).
Subjects became increasingly aware of the stability of this overdetermined new
order. Being unable to rely on a rhetoric that merely parodies others without
taking note of one’s own place in the picture, or perhaps out of fear of
reprimand or peer pressure, comic haiku authors would apparently tone
down their oppositional rhetoric.
Also contributing to the blunting of the
oppositional comic haiku at this time was the influence of Western ideas of
literature, nation, and history that became immensely popular, even, to some
extent, before the Meiji Restoration itself. The rhetoric of “civilization and
enlightenment” meant the degradation of existing popular culture. In the realm
of song and poetry, this policy meant supplanting comic poetry and song with a
more “civilized” poetry of the new nation: shintaishi
(new-style poetry). While not subsuming satirical verse genres, shintaishi
contributed to the elimination of many comic genres. In contrast to “vulgar”
comic forms,
shintaishi was touted as part of the acculturation of the nation to a vision
of a “Western” Japan.
The pressure to do away with the “bad customs” of the past and the impact it had
on cultural production in general is shown to be extensive in these very comic
haiku, as is found in the countless satires of the Civilization and
Enlightenment period.
Yanagida Izumi, eminent scholar of Meiji
literature and history, used the phrase “all-encompassing truth” (issai no
shinjitsu) as a metaphor to describe the new quality of the dissemination of
knowledge during the Civilization and Enlightenment period.
In the context of comic poetry and song, “all-encompassing truth” meant a
seriousness that threatened to diminish the enjoyment of these subcultures, as
well as many aspects of commoner culture in general. At the same time, the
introduction of this seriousness itself was one of the most satirized aspects of
early Meiji society.
In the above examples of comic haiku one
recognizes a pattern of using them to expose folly and to find means of making
sense, in their ironic language, of the historical complexities that led to
whatever events were at hand and scene being depicted. Though the range of
subject matter is far broader than the slice of comic haiku discussed here in
the context of nation and ideology, these adequately illustrate a form of
expression that retained the language of pun-filled wordplay while reflecting
changes in how commoners viewed and participated in public opinion-making during
the struggle to construct a new Japan and an ideological consensus that settled
well with enough people to stave off any further serious revolutionary coup.
The significance of comic haiku may in part be attributed to its relation to
other “serious” verse discourse, especially shintaishi, which would
virtually ban puns in favor of univocal stylistics observed in high European
poetry.
Graffiti verse
consist of anonymous, versified lampoons or satirical ditties in the most
general sense, encompassing many varieties of illicitly printed and posted
graffiti. The use of “rakusho” (落書,
graffiti often in verse, lit. “fallen writing”), thought to have existed since
the Muromachi period, varies widely. Some literary histories suggest that we
distinguish it from “rakushu” (落首,
lit. “fallen verse”) and “rakugaki” (落書き,
graffiti). Kamisaka disagrees with Motoori Norinaga’s explanation that
rakushu is a phonetic transformation of rakusho, preferring the
explanation that rakushu designates lower-grade work and rakusho
higher-grade work. Regardless, it is clear that rakushu, which came to
refer specifically to 31 or 17 syllable verses, were more narrowly defined than
rakusho, though they both came to be used interchangeably in the Edo
period. However, the more heterogeneous rakusho too came to be most
closely associated with such short forms, especially 31 syllable verses, which
often resemble comic waka (kyōka).
Kamisaka sees rakusho as developing out of the emulation of a comic haiku
mode of satire, but emphasized that comic haiku tend to confine themselves
to events within the lowers echelons of society (rumors, talk of illicit trysts,
prostitution) and do not evidence the broader awareness of multiple class
relations that distinguishes rakusho.
It is in this doubly defiant sense of satirically outdoing and even mocking
comic haiku and kyōka themselves that rakusho were “fallen
writing.” Thus they were also the most marginal of writings.
Though once including prose as well, from the
Edo period, graffiti verse most often took the appearance of “crazy and playful
poetic language.”
They substituted for legally sanctioned means of expressing dissent and
flourished during the late Tokugawa period.
Unlike legally published yomiuri and kawaraban (clay
tablet-printed news), which reported news and contained editorials in a direct
prose style, graffiti verse was figurative,
so as to disguise the message in the medium, and avoid the excessive wrath of
the censors and the particular officials scrutinized in their lampoons. However,
the use of figurative language also reflects the lack of more or less
contractual obligation to provide current news and events, as was the case with
the yomiuri (lit., “read-and-sell”), which were sold by vendors as
they walked around reading them aloud. While yomiuri were printed in
order to turn a profit, and depended on ordinary public channels, graffiti verse
was not for profit and could be distributed under the censors’ radar. They were
posted and distributed primarily by viewing and subsequent retelling by word of
mouth. Yomiuri and kawaraban had to conform to censor
regulations lest the authorities stop their distribution, which was of course
essential if they were to turn a profit. Those producing graffiti verse was
relatively unfettered by such entanglements.
Discussing the widespread use of graffiti verse
as a means of eluding censorship laws, Sakuraki Akira writes in his
Sokumenkan bakumatsushi, a multi-volume collection of graffiti verse:
Preceding the Meiji Ishin,
in the feudal world of the Tokugawa, freedom to criticize the government of the
realm in newspapers and magazines as we do today, and to denounce social ills,
was not permitted at all. Thus hierarchical distinctions as they stood in their
proper order did not allow for interference, however minor, by the lower
classes.
Commoners (including low-ranking samurai) had to submit to anything the
Shogunate ordered, and in this set of circumstances, no matter how unequal the
people (jinmin) were, there was no room for addressing this inequality.
Thus it was only natural that by way of graffiti verse, written challenges (tōbun)
and the like did criticism of the realm inadvertently come to be circulated in
abundance.
Though they had been written since at least the
late twelfth century, it is in the Tokugawa period that they came to flourish at
a new level. When Shogunate failures to address the needs of the common people
grew extreme, graffiti verse was written in profusion. When the Shogun’s Council
suggested to the Shogun that the prohibition of graffiti verse genres be
ordered, the Shogun on the contrary told them they were becoming ministers of
admonishment.
From this exchange one can see the attention attracted by the proliferation of
graffiti verse, and the seriousness with which some officials sought to quell
this affront to their authority.
Though graffiti verse is a broad rubric,
including numerous verse forms, I shall focus especially on Chinese acrostics,
satirical dialogue, and enumerating verses such as
kazoe-uta (counting songs) and
iroha-uta (ABC songs). As a particular mode of social expression,
graffiti verse use many of the same verse forms used by commoners (comic haiku,
kyōka, and popular songs). However, graffiti verse is not always
written from the point of view of politically disenfranchised commoners. Most
graffiti verse appears to have been written by disgruntled masterless samurai
(rōnin)
and some by merchants. A deluge of graffiti verses of the opinion/grievance
handbills (sutebumi) and pasted handbills (harifuda) types
accompanied the rise of independent bands of rōnin, who formed terrorist
groups making strikes against governmental powers and challenging their
legitimacy. It is an ideologically interesting form that reveals dissent within
certain strata of the nominally ruling samurai class, as well as the
economically empowered merchant class. Graffiti verse exhibit a spectrum
of positions, from humorously conciliatory, silly satires of current events
(similar to what can be found in comic haiku) to calculated formulations of
grievances and plans for rebellion, as well as to bitter references to failed
terrorist attacks.
The form is so diverse that, in this brief introduction, I can best explore
examples of representative subgenres.
Research on graffiti verse has focused
predominantly on its usefulness as a source of historical materials.
Kamisaka emphasizes the historical setting reflected in graffiti verse, which he
calls “particularly biased” and containing a “corrective evaluation” that
reflects critical observation of the underside of how situations appear. In a
way complementing my ideological examination of verse, Kamisaka defends the use
of graffiti verse as historical documentation that is necessarily of a
fragmentary nature. For him, the compression of expression is an outstanding
feature of graffiti verse, which he praises for its capacity to reveal core
complexities of contemporary events.
Kamisaka situates graffiti verse in terms of its development from a form
differentiating interests (rigai) with respect to various social
phenomena, to a form employed to foment opposition to the ruling top-tier
samurai.
One form of graffiti verse is the Chinese
acrostic. Though it appears in many forms, including maze-like chains of
kanbun
(Chinese prose written by Japanese), the most prevalent form is a series of
grids of nine characters forming a square.
They are read as four lines, with each line utilizing the central character;
however, the English delineation removes the pleasure of deciphering the reading
and posted message. Though more cerebral than poetic, the form as read in the
original is invested with a rhythm based on the repetition of the central
character in the acrostic, providing a locus for both linking diverse
associations and creating humorous effects such as presenting alternative,
ironic sides of a given situation, and incorporating amusing, sudden or clever
turns. Some of these acrostic poems have some characteristics of sorites
(logically progressing nonsensical syllogistic chains), which can be found in
comic lines in Shakespeare.
Being linked by a central Chinese character,
there is the added element of a rhythmic unity as well as a “logical” play with
shifting contexts and aspects linked by the axis of the central, recurrent
character. These acrostics, like sorites in English, make a mockery of coherent
lines of relation or reasoning by underscoring the discrepancy between lived and
ideal relations in the surviving socio-political order. The “logic” or “reason”
involves creating gaps with respect to the historical situation at hand. In the
following example, the central character in the acrostic is used as a pivot so
as to create a “circling back” effect. For the sake of situating such repetition
in an English-language context, it may be compared with devices of repetition in
a villanelle or sestina (though the tone in these acrostic blocks is usually
serious and political rather than aesthetically detached). The following is a
very concise, direct example:
|
Above there is no
trust,
below no propriety,
the retainers have
no loyalty
and the masters have
no heads.
[74] |
下
臣
上
\
| /
首－
無
－主
/ |
\
信
忠
禮 |
4below
[there is]
|
7[the]
retainers [have] |
1above
[there is] |
|
12heads
|
no (appears
in each line) |
10[and
the]
masters
[have] |
|
3trust |
9loyalty |
6propriety |
|
|
|
|
|
|
These acrostics are read as four lines, beginning with the upper-right character
and diagonally down, secondly from the upper-left character diagonally down,
then from the central character of the top row vertically down, and finally from
the central character of the rightmost column horizontally across to the left.
When translating this acrostic into English,
“no” adequately provides a substitute for the central, repeated “nai”
character in this acrostic. The central character would have been read as the
final character in the typical Japanese method of reading
kanbun, reversing the order of the final two characters in each line and
thus further complicating the reading as would be desirable in these outlawed
satires. The first line would be read, “ue de shin [ga] nai,” and “ga
nai” would round off every line, creating a dry rhyme and rhythm punctuating
the message. This “stanza” concludes a series of four such blocks of Chinese
verse
acrostics in which rhythm based on the repetition of the central character
in the acrostic provides a locus for both linking diverse associations and
creating humorous effects in the juxtapositions that arise. Here is the entire
graffiti verse in which the above example appears:
|
Changing his residence,
bitter under house arrest,
and plotting a quiet retreat:
a warrior in retirement.
A time in the future
before the troops set off,
they won’t have changed their base
ways before awakening.
In a world full of decay
today this is too much,
the barbarians prosper
sending people bustling.
Above there is no trust,
below no propriety,
the retainers have no loyalty
and the masters have no heads. |
蟄 閑
住
\
| /
士
－
居
－
隠
/
| \
代
企
恨
軍
眼
時
\
| /
止
- 末
－
幣
/
| \
来 覚 発
今
夷
世
\ | /
騒
－
盛
－
人
/ | \
哀
也
過
下
臣
上
\ | /
首
－ 無 －
主
/ | \
信 忠
禮 |
Class schema, and their bankrupty, are mapped
out in this final acrostic “stanza.” For a merchant, this crisscrossing of
negations (discussed as the example used to illustrate how to read kanji
acrostics) would have symbolized the decline of transactions by which he
collected his profits.
The ruling class needed to be able to trust those below them, the lower samurai,
who were in normal circumstances obliged to convey trustworthiness to their
sworn masters. Thus the “trust” (shin) was between high and low
and especially important within the samurai class — within each domain and,
ultimately, with respects to domainal ambitions and their relative standings
vis-à-vis the Shogunate. As unrest grew among all classes and domains, the ruled
(all lower-samurai and below) no longer bothered to exhibit the sense of respect
and decorum that conveyed trustworthiness in compliance with the firmly
established ideological orthodoxy. The retainers, who were the mediators between
the very top and the other classes, exhibited no loyalty, so that the relations
between ruler and ruled no longer benefited from a unity of command, actions,
and legitimacy to govern and be governed under a Confucian model of reciprocal
relations between ruler and ruled (the ideas of which were hotly debated to
diverse ends). Such relations became murky and loyalties diverse.
These acrostics are among the most serious of
the satirical verse forms. These include most prominently comic waka (kyōka)
as formally satirical with respect to waka,
comic haiku as satirical vis-à-vis hokku (the original form, now
generally known as “haiku”),
and satirical Chinese poetry (kyōshi) and this kanshi acrostic as
satirical with respect to the more philosophical and abstract Chinese poetry.
These acrostics, because of the tendency of the repetition of the central
character to exaggerate parallelism that is already prominent in poetry written
in Chinese, in practice are more analytical in their critical raids on
established ideological and structural assumptions. It would be easy to label
them “deconstructive,” but I believe this terms has been overused for the sake
of unifying a critical ideology in the late 20th century at the
expense of understanding the complexities of the way language was handled and
wielded in these bakumatsu and Meiji contexts, where Western notions of
an integrated subject associated with expression are but one dim possibility for
situating linguistic and ideological practices. As kyōka parody the
elevated literary court language specific to waka, Chinese poetry-based
satire parodied and twisted the rules of poetry written in Chinese precepts,
specifically those of Confucian values. These bitter acrostics did not always
attack these values themselves and certainly not so as to dispense with them
altogether. Instead Kida sees the partisan propagandistic uses of graffiti
verse, from around 1863, as having robbed the genre of its “original esprit.”
The governing order was at that time breaking
down on all fronts: politics, economics, social order, and foreign relations.
The somewhat bitter mode of protest in these acrostics, whereby the subjects
(the ruled) exhibit a concern for the realm as a whole, is important to
Confucian models of state. As is apropos in a Confucian manner of sympathetic
remonstration, they both express anger and paternal
