Thursday, May 07, 2020
Longing to Attack the Southern Barbarians
Poem by Date Masamune (1567-1636), tr. Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, ©1955),
p. 436:
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Longing to attack the southern barbariansPoem by Yanagawa Seigan (1789-1858), op. cit., p. 439:
[Directed against the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers and missionaries, who had arrived in Japan from the south.]
False religions delude the land with a ceaseless clamor.
I would strike the barbarian tribes, but the time comes not.
When will the great roc rise and southward soar?
Long have I waited the wind of his ten-thousand-mile wings.
No title
[An attack on the Shogunate]
You, whose ancestors in the mighty days
Roared at the skies and swept across the earth,
Stand now helpless to drive off wrangling foreigners—
How empty your title, "Queller of Barbarians"!
