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Title: The Colors of Poetry: Essays in Classic Japanese Verse (Reflections) by Makoto Ooka, Ooka Makoto, Donald Keene ISBN: 0-942668-27-8 Publisher: Katydid Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1991 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $14.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Colors of Poetry & Princess Shikishi
Comment: Here is a fine book on Japanese waka (31 syllable poetry) -- a collection of lectures and essays by Ooka Makoto (b. 1931) rather than a poetry collection, although a number of poems are included as examples.

Makoto's essays are very sensitive, works of art themselves, beautifully insightful and provocative. Especiially interesting is his fascination with and frequent return to the waka of Princess Shikishi (ca. 1150-1201), daughter of Emperor Goshirakawa. Shikishi spent more than ten years of her young life as a cloistered Shinto priestess, and like most Japanese poets was also strongly influenced by Buddhism. Shinto is the indigenous nature-based religion of Japan and the mystery of Shikishi's nature poetry derives from Shinto mysteries. As an example, the following verse by Shikishi is presented in several of Makoto's essays -- he declares it the very best of all waka in the Kokin Wakashu:

Bathed / in the light of / the moon at dawn / petals faintly fall / hidden among leaves.

As the author points out Shikishi here uses a zoom lens - - from the broad panorama of the dawn sky closing in to a very small area -- and yet the final picture, the last detail, is hidden after all. Shikishi's poetry reminds me of the ancient saying of Heraclitus -- physis philei krypsein -- "nature loves to hide!"

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For an English translation of Shikishi's complete poems see also: "String of Beads," translated and introduction by Hiroaki Sato (U. of Hawaii Press, 1993).