The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LCO010000, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, HIS021000, HISTORY / Asia / Japan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Year by Year: A Miscellany

ISHIWARA MASAAKIRA

Although born into a farm family, Ishiwara Masaakira (d. 1821) displayed bookish tendencies from an early age and lived at a time when even someone from the provinces—he came from Owari, east of Kyoto on the Tōkai Road—could attach himself to a teacher and hope for a place in the scholarly world. Going up to Nagoya, he at first studied ancient ceremonial and traditional legal codes, eventually enrolling as a disciple of Motoori Norinaga’s. Seeking some kind of government position, he went up to Edo in 1801, but, lacking political skills and experience, failed to find a place for himself. Fortunately, however, he soon became known to the textual scholar Hanawa Hokinoichi.1 Under the latter’s direction, Masaakira played a major part in the compilation and editing of Gunsho ruijū (Classified Collection of Books, 1793–1819), one of the first large collections of Japanese literature ever produced in Japan. While in Edo, he lived first in Shinagawa and later in Ichigaya. In addition to his work as an editor, he was active as a waka poet and wrote several scholarly treatises and commentaries, as well as the work from which the selections here are taken, Nennen zuihitsu (Year by Year: A Miscellany), a four-volume miscellany produced between 1801 and 1805.

* * *

Snow is beautiful wherever it falls, but especially awe-inspiring at seaside. Particularly delightful is the sight of two or three boats moored at an inlet, glimpsed through gaps between a few broken reeds, their sedgetopped cabins white with snow.

. . .

In a market town, there is usually nothing to attract the eye, but even such a place is a rare delight on a snowy morning. Wherever the snow has fallen, the scene is transformed. The sun rises, everyone gets up, and the streets are so bad that people have trouble walking about—a real vexation, one must admit. But how sad it is to hear them making a fuss, saying, “Come on, shovel it up! Get it out of the way!”

. . .

It must have been about four years ago. It was in the Ninth Month of the year when I moved into the house at Shinagawa2 where I now live. Few leaves were left on the surrounding wild grasses, and the garden had so gone to seed that the place didn’t seem fit for human habitation. It was a deserted field, really; except for children passing through, there were no signs of life, not even rabbit trails. Yet here, choked by tangles of weeds, was my little house, standing by itself—my mansion, albeit one without a single samurai in its guardhouse, a place where I lived my days entirely alone.

On the last day of the Tenth Month, the wind was blowing hard, so I snuggled up to my charcoal brazier and gazed out at the evening sky, quite overcome with regrets. Looking out on that blank and colorless scene, I drank two or three cups of saké, and when I got sleepy merely lay down right where I was.

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