■ Explanation
This book presents poems that were popular throughout Japan from the Meiji period to the end of the Pacific War. It is an English translation of Weissaster : ein romantisches Epos, the German translation of the same poems prepared by Karl Florenz, who was well versed in Japanese literature. The English translation was made by Arthur Lloyd, who, like Florenz, had a thorough knowledge of Japanese literature. Both are splendid feats of translation that are as sonorous as their original.
The epic tells the story of White Aster, a maiden who is so named because she was found in a clump of white asters and decides to go on a journey in search of her father, whose whereabouts are not clear. She is captured by robbers, but is rescued by her older brother, who had left home and become a priest. Subsequently, she attempts suicide by drowning as a result of a conflict that had her torn between her sense of obligation to the old man who had treated her so kindly and the last will of her mother, who wanted her to marry her brother (the two being not related by blood). Thereafter, she is reunited with her brother, and when the two return home together, they find that their father is already back, safe and sound.
The tale originated in Kumamoto after the Satsuma Rebellion (the year 1877). Sonken (Tetsujiro) Inoue first related it in a poem of essentially the same title, written in the Chinese style. This was followed by another version by Naobumi Ochiai in the contemporary seven-and-five-syllable meter Japanese style. Besides "White Aster," the book contains translations of the Chinese-style poems by Sonken, of a poem by Kazutoshi Ueda, and of "dodoitsu" ditties. As is noted in the preface, the illustrations for the "White Aster" poem were drawn by Shoso, and those for the other poems, by Yoshimune. |
