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Heart of Yamato
Reading Don SANDERSON's translation of KATŌ Shūichi's History of Japanese literature, I ran across this in volume two about the 18th-Century beef between MOTOORI Norinaga and UEDA Akinari:
On his portrait Norinaga wrote the following well-known poem:If someone asksAkinari recognized that other countries had their own myths and he thought it impossible to transfer Japanese myths to them: 'Each one of the writings has a separate account of the creation of the universe for each country ... and even if one transfers them to other countries they would not be accepted, being self-regarding accounts.' This is all the more so when Japan, as seen on Dutch maps of the world, is no more than 'a small island, like a tiny leaf that has fallen onto a vast lake'. It would be difficult to persuade other countries that this was the country from which came the sun and moon, with whose light they were all blessed. Akinari notes in his Tandai shōshinroku that it was only 'old' takes that give the sun and moon human forms; in fact 'seen through the telescope they call a zongarasu the sun, which flames, and the moon, which boils, are nothing of the sort'. He dismisses Norinaga's theories as 'the talk of a sheltered rustic' and 'the cant of an indigent priest'. 'The "Japanese spirit" is something without meaning. In any country the "spirit" of that country is its stench.' He adds a verse:
What is the heart of Yamato:
Shining in the morning sun,
Blossom of the mountain cherry.Again all that mumbo-jumboNorinaga's verse was popular in the militarist Japan of the nineteen-thirties and forties and remains well-known today, while few people are familiar with Akinari's poem. [...]
About the heart of Yamato
And cherry-blossom.
I decided to look up the original of Akinari's commentary, and, courtesy of the Norinaga Kinenkan and the Kanazawa College of Art (who have both put bits of it online, with commentary) here it is:
月も日も、目・鼻・口もあつて、人体にときなしたるは古伝也。ゾンガラスと云ふ千里鏡で見たれば、日は炎々タリ、月は沸々タリ、そんな物ではござらしやらぬ。い中人のふところおやじの説も、又田舎者の聞いては信ずべし。京の者が聞けば、王様の不面目也。やまとだましいと云ふことをとかくにいふよ。どこの国でも其国のたましいが国の臭気也。おのれが像の上に書きしとぞ。
敷島やまと心の道とへば朝日にてらすやまざくら花
とはいかに／＼。おのれが像の上には、尊大のおや玉也。そこで、「しき島のやまと心のなんのかのうろんな事を又さくら花」とこたへた。「いまからか」と云うて笑ひし也。
Akinari seems particularly amused by the fact that Norinaga wrote the poem on a portrait of himself. He also misquotes the poem slightly as "If you ask the way of the heart of Yamato, it is the morning sun shining on the blossom of the mountain cherry" rather than "If someone asks what is the heart of Yamato, it is the blossom of the mountain cherry fragrant in the morning sun" (敷島のやまとごゝろを人とはゞ朝日にゝほふ山ざくら花), which is the version you usually hear. (Note that this error seems to have spread in part to Katō's own quotation of the poem as well, with the fragrance-free shining.)
TL;DR Here's Akinari's answer poem, with my own translation:
しき島のやまと心のなんのかのうろんな事を又さくら花
The heart of Yamato, blah, blah, all that crap, and again with the cherry blossoms.
Charles:
I love that phrase なんのかのうろんな事 and am tempted to explore its rich expressive possibilities with a translation of my own. But alas, I am too busy scoring 43,000 English exams written by semi-literate 7th graders. No I am not kidding. This is a pitfall of being an unemployable linguistics geek, you are forced to take crappy temp jobs like this.