Skip to main content

An Analysis of Yamanoue no Okura's Poems

In the two poems of Yamanoue no Okura, one may observe that the imagery first to come to mind is the ‘treasure’ found in both poems, however, the tone and narrative of the poems surpasses the limitations of what ‘treasure’ can equate to. However, by looking at ‘Mortality’ as the unifying imagery, Yamanoue no Okura depicts it as the whole human experience. It is the sense of helplessness in the face of the divine or of temporal passage. It is also the sense of weakness, for mortality is always equated with being flawed, unlike the perfect being which is a god. For the first poem, found in Man’youshuu V: 806-807, the voice of the poem expresses a deep longing for something that is unreachable. Information is given to the reader through observations on the passing of time using the choice of the food the narrator partakes: melons for summer and chestnuts for winter, noticed after repetitive experiences. The narrator even voices out his pains and sorrow – the helplessness – that reminds him daily of the situation he is in. The envoy of the poem creates a striking conclusion to the narrative. It explains that while the narrator may have monetary compensation, there lies a great distance, geographically, that separates the narrator and his family. The tone of the narrative also changes in the envoy. From the longing and the suffering, there is now a sense of surrender as the narrator draws a conclusion, both that his family is worth more than any treasure and that he cannot change his current fate. A similar imagery of mortality can be observed in the second poem found in Man’youshuu V: 909-911, where it is depicted in two ways. Firstly, there is the mortality of the child that the narrator observes through specific life experiences. As a person, imperfect and without divine powers, the longing for security and interpersonal relations is clearly depicted with the way the narrator fondly recalls the events. It is a human touch that hinges in our understanding the ‘value of love’ that this particular family possessed, which explains why, when the narrative arrives at the ‘father’s praying for a miracle’ and ultimately the child’s passing, the immediate actions of the father is something we can sympathise with. The second way mortality was depicted in this poem was through the father’s act of witnessing the events and the helplessness to change the outcome. The moment he prays for divine intervention is his surrender, and his anguish after the boy’s death is when he realises he has no control over his fate or of anyone’s. Control is a concept humans always pursue because humans have a clear understanding that they lack something– and in this poem, it was the power to stop death. Like the first poem, the envoy in the second provides a perfect ending to the narrative, with its only difference being the tone, now a decisive, if not commanding, one – a natural response of human grief.

(November 26, 2015)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bibliography: " Game Design as Narrative Architecture" (2004) by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game , edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–30. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. In this article, Jenkins examines games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility. He list downs the characteristics of games as defined by current Ludology versus Narratology debates such as: (1) not all games tell stories but they do have narrative aspirations, follows genre entertainment and previous narrative experiences; (2) narrative analysis need not be prescriptive; (3) games should not be reduced to the experience of a story; and (4) if games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories for games as a medium, specifically, is what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions. He also lists down the problems and limitations within the current game study discourses, often pointing out how ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The Imaginary" (2006) Chapter 1 part 1 by Claudia Strauss

Reevaluating Scholarships (October 17, 2019) In Claudia Strauss’s article “The Imaginary” (2006), she gives a detailed discussion and analysis of the major scholarships in cultural studies regarding the matter of the Imaginaries, such as the works of Castoriadis, Lacan, Anderson, and Taylor, in order to map out the essential arguments that are more popularly being used/cited in cultural studies research, before she examines how Ivy uses these concepts with regard to the national-imaginaries with the Japanese socio-cultural sphere. In summary, Strauss explains that Castoriadis was concerned with "concepts of cultural abstraction, reification and homogenization, while Lacan used the concept of the imaginary to explain fantasies, and Anderson and Taylor used the concept for explaining cultural models as potentially valuable when used with person-centered ethnographic methods to study real rather than abstract cultural subjects” (323). Despite the summation of the the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis: "The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo" (1998) by Inoue Shun

In Inoue Shun’s “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo” (1998), Inoue explores the modern invention, and subsequent reinvention, of the Japanese martial arts by an examination of Kodokan judo (163). This is done through a detailed discussion of Kano’s decision and active participation of creating the new martial arts such as: conception, process of modernization through scientification of the martial arts, promotions and competitions, institutionalizations and adoptions into various agencies (government institutions, universities, etc.), establishment of the Kodokan Cultural Association (promotion of the basic principles of Kodokan judo as well as serving as a legitimate infrastructure and governing body that actively promotes the new martial arts ideology), its inevitable re-invention post-Kano years by the Dai Nihon Butokukai (leading to an ultranationalistic role), and finally, a return to the sportification of budo post-WW2 in order to escape censorship wh...
Post a Comment
Read more