More "Word-Gems Radiant with Light"

In 1993, Edwin Cranston published the first volume of his proposed fourvolume anthology of Japanese poetry, each book of which was to be devoted to one of the periods of waka history as characterized by Robert Brower and Earl Miner in their Japanese Court Poetry.¹ The first volume, The Gem-Glistening Cup, comprised translations of verses, with accompanying commentaries and notes, from the time of the Kojiki up to and including the Man'yōshū. Now available, Cranston's second volume, Grasses of Remembrance , focuses on poetry of the early classical period.

Reviewer after reviewer of The Gem-Glistening Cup characterized that volume as monumental, and it is a fitting description for Grasses of Remembrance as well. The ninth to twelfth centuries saw the compilation of four royal collections and the production of numerous prose works that included or were constituted around waka. In terms of poets, the period begins with Ono no Komachi (dates unknown) and Ariwara no Narihira (825-880) and closes with Minamoto no Tsunenobu (1016-1097). Cranston's introduction discloses something of the difficult choices of selection and focus-texts or individual poets-that were forced upon him. The early classical period, he notes, "is notable for its books, its collections of poems, as much as for its poets. To have Volume One centered on Man'yōshū and let Kokinshū and other notable texts disappear as integers among the welter of their individual contributors seemed unacceptable. And yet, to neglect an author-by-author approach … seemed equally wrong" (Part A, p. xx). Cranston's solution was to allocate a subsequent volume 3 to the individual poets of this period, with the following, mid-classical, period then being assigned to a fourth volume, and so on. Further, the present volume 2 is itself divided into two books. Cranston devotes Part A to the first four royal collections, Kokinshū(905), Gosenshū (commissioned 951), Shūishū (1006-1007), and Goshūishū (1086- 1087), with selections from the Shinsen Man'yōshū (893) and Kokin-rokujō (by 987) rounding it out. For the first three royal collections, Cranston highlights the love compositions, translating and commenting upon entire books of poems on that subject: all six books of Kokinshū love poems and two books each of love verses from the Gosenshū and Shūishū. The other books of these anthologies are represented by a selection, or sometimes all, of the anonymous verses they contain. (The Goshūishū receives a different treatment, about which more will be said later.) Most of Part B consists of Cranston's translation of the 795 poems in Genji monogatari, with a running commentary on the tale itself. This is followed by several valuable appendices: translations of the Goshūishū preface and of the Nangoshūishō (which queries various of the selections made by the compiler of that collection), glossaries, bibliography, and various indexes of poets and poems.

The range and types of texts and poems that Cranston has chosen to include in this volume provide a complex and engaging picture of waka production in the early classical period. First, Cranston's selections make clear the distinguishing features of each of the four royal collections, as he traces adjustments in the compilers' notions of what types of poetry, as well as whose (that of women poets, for instance), were worthy of selection. Second, with its focus on the anonymous verses from the first three royal collections and on their love poems, Part A highlights strata of verses that are either informal and/or can be dated to a period earlier than the court that produced the anthology-they are poems a step removed from the Chinese-influenced, formal "Kokinshū style," in time or context of composition. Focusing on such verses permits Cranston to show the continued recognition given to older styles of waka in the royal collections. In addition, especially with the love poems, he explores a poetry that, in...