Iv

PHILOSOPHICAL verses do not form a numerous class of Japanese poems upon semi; but they possess an interest altogether exotic. As the metamorphosis of the butterfly supplied to old Greek thought an emblem of the soul's ascension, so the natural history of the cicada has furnished Buddhism with similitudes and parables for the teaching of doctrine.

Man sheds his body only as the semi sheds its skin. But each reincarnation obscures the memory of the previous one: we remember our former existence no more than the semi remembers the shell from which it has emerged. Often a semi may be found in the act of singing beside its cast-off skin; therefore a poet has written:--

Ware to waga Kara ya tomuro-- Semi no koe. --YAYU.

Methinks that semi sits and sings by his former body,-- Chanting the funeral service over his own dead self.

This cast-off skin, or simulacrum,--clinging to bole or branch as in life, and seeming still to stare with great glazed eyes,--has suggested many things both to profane and to religious poets. In love-songs it is often likened to a body consumed by passionate longing. In Buddhist poetry it becomes a symbol of earthly pomp,--the hollow show of human greatness:--

Yo no naka yo Kaeru no hadaka, Semi no kinu!

Naked as frogs and weak we enter this life of trouble; Shedding our pomps we pass: so semi quit their skins.

But sometimes the poet compares the winged and shrilling semi to a human ghost, and the broken shell to the body left behind:--

Tamashii wa Ukiyo ni naite, Semi no kara.

Here the forsaken shell: above me the voice of the creature Shrills like the cry of a Soul quitting this world of pain.

Then the great sun-quickened tumult of the cicadae--landstorm of summer life foredoomed so soon to pass away--is likened by preacher and poet to the tumult of human desire. Even as the semi rise from earth, and climb to warmth and light, and clamor, and presently again return to dust and silence,--so rise and clamor and pass the generations of men:--

Yagate shinu Keshiki wa miezu, Semi no koe. --BASHO.

Never an intimation in all those voices of semi How quickly the hush will come,--how speedily all must die.

I wonder whether the thought in this little verse does not interpret something of that summer melancholy which comes to us out of nature's solitudes with the plaint of insect-voices. Unconsciously those millions of millions of tiny beings are preaching the ancient wisdom of the East,--the perpetual Sutra of Impermanency.

Yet how few of our modern poets have given heed to the voices of insects!

Perhaps it is only to minds inexorably haunted by the Riddle of Life that Nature can speak to-day, in those thin sweet trillings, as she spake of old to Solomon.

The Wisdom of the East hears all things. And he that obtains it will hear the speech of insects,--as Sigurd, tasting the Dragon's Heart, heard suddenly the talking of birds.

NOTE.--For the pictures of semi accompanying this paper, I am indebted to a curious manuscript work in several volumes, preserved in the Imperial Library at Uyeno. The work is entitled Chufu-Zusetsu,--which might be freely rendered as "Pictures and Descriptions of Insects,"--and is divided into twelve books. The writer's name is unknown; but he must have been an amiable and interesting person, to judge from the naive preface which he wrote, apologizing for the labors of a lifetime. "When I was young," he says, "I was very fond of catching worms and insects, and making pictures of their shapes,--so that these pictures have now become several hundred in number." He believes that he has found a good reason for studying insects: "Among the multitude of living creatures in this world," he says, "those having large bodies are familiar: we know very well their names, shapes, and virtues, and the poisons which they possess. But there remain very many small creatures whose natures are still unknown, notwithstanding the fact that such little beings as insects and worms are able to injure men and to destroy what has value. So I think that it is very important for us to learn what insects or worms have special virtues or poisons." It appears that he had sent to him "from other countries" some kinds of insects "that eat the leaves and shoots of trees;" but he could not "get their exact names." For the names of domestic insects, he consulted many Chinese and Japanese books, and has been "able to write the names with the proper Chinese characters;" but he tells us that he did not fail "to pick up also the names given to worms and insects by old farmers and little boys." The preface is dated thus:--"Ansei Kanote, the third month--at a little cottage" [1856].

With the introduction of scientific studies the author of the Chufu-Zusetsu could no longer hope to attract attention. Yet his very modest and very beautiful work was forgotten only a moment. It is now a precious curiosity; and the old man's ghost might to-day find some happiness in a visit to the Imperial Library.

Japanese Female Names

[Decoration]