A few days ago, Metafilter user brundlefly posted a link to the Skeletal Drawing blog's three-part series on the history of skeletal drawings. As I was reading through "Part 2 - Bone Wars to the 1950's", I came across this picture:

A Yunnanosaurus, drawn by its discoverer Yang Zhongjian 楊鍾建 (a.k.a. C. C. Young). And with a poem attached! Here's what I make of it (plus some updates from comments):

埋骨亥家田　滄桑幾変遷
蜥龍推遠祖　紅層賴紀年
再造雄影留　玉立印象鮮
雲南龍掘取　記骨付一遍
　　楊鍾建題

Buried bones beneath homes and fields Skeletons buried beneath the fields
Oceans to mulberry orchards, how the ages pass
The lizard considers its far ancestor
Red layers let us count the years
Reconstructed, its mighty shape remains
Graceful its form and vivid to see
Yunnanosaurus, now unearthed:
A tale written in bones
  —Yang Zhongjian

I've refrained from adding [?] after every piece of guesswork in the above, but don't let that fool you: I'm well out of my depth here. (For instance, I'm not even convinced that third character in line one is really 実, and I'm not sure even if so just what that would mean. It was probably 亥, "short" for 骸!) Sinological expertise welcome.

Sticking with the 1703 Genroku earthquake theme from my last post, here are some interesting entries from the Kanro sō 甘露叢, an anonymous chronicle of the reign of Tokugawa "PETA" Tsunayoshi 徳川綱吉, quoted in Tōkyō jishin chizu 東京地震地図 ("Tokyo earthquake map") by Usami Tatsuo 宇佐見龍夫 (1983).

Background: The earthquake itself happened in the early hours of the 23rd day of the eleventh month (by the old calendar), so these entries were written afterwards.

二十三日 地震直後、辰巳の方雷光の如く　折々光有之
七ッ半、光物東より西に飛ぶ。今夜に至り、辰巳の方電光のごとく、夜ふけても不止
二十四日　申の下刻より辰巳の方電の如く　夜更ても不止。
二十五日　暮六少過光物東南の間より西に至　辰巳の方電の如くなる光　前々の如し
二十六日　夜二入辰巳の光　前の如し。
二十七日　申の下刻より辰巳の光前の如し。
二十八日　申の下刻より辰巳の光　前の如し。
二十九日　[...] 同刻光物　東より西に至る　辰巳の方光前の如く　今夜は別して強し
十二月二十一日　夜に入雲　辰巳の方電の如し　戌の刻より晴　寅の刻月のあたり雲赤き事甚にして　丸さ九尺計也　右の雲むらむらといたし　月の近くは色うすく　そとのまはり程赤く　烟の如し　常の月かさとはちがいたる様に見えたり

23rd day: Right after earthquake, occasional flashes of light like lightning to the southeast.
At five in the morning, light flies from east to west. Lightning-like [flashing] to southeast continues until evening, does not stop until early morning.
24th day: From five in the afternoon, lightning-like [flashing] to southeast. Does not stop until early morning.
25th day: Just after six, light goes from southeast to west. Light like lightning to southeast. Same as before.
26th day: After night falls, light to southeast. Same as before.
27th day: From five in the afternoon, light to southeast. Same as before.
28th day: From five in the afternoon, light to southeast. Same as before.
29th day: [...] At the same time [about 18:30], going from east to west, light to southeast, same as before. Especially strong tonight.
21st day of 12th month: After night falls, clouds. Light to southeast. Clear from seven in evening. At three in morning, clouds around moon very red, about nine shaku across. Clouds clustered. Color is faint near moon but redder with distance from moon. Like smoke. Seems different from normal haze around moon.

In other words, earthquake light and earthquake clouds. (This page has reproductions of the famous 1960s Matsushiro earthquake swarm photos that got earthquake light promoted from "crazy story" to "unexplained phenomenon"; as far as I know, earthquake clouds are still in the latter category.) And not just any earthquake lights: earthquake lights that lasted for weeks! Also note that the location of the earthquake was somewhere in the ocean south of Tokyo, as evidenced by the incredibly destructive tsunami that reportedly laid waste to... the area where I live right now, actually.

According to Usami, Konoe Motohiro 近衛基熈's diary (基熈公記) also mentions these earthquake lights. Konoe's diary likens the lights to shooting stars, and corroborates the multi-week duration. (It also claims that the lights were observed before the quake as well, but this strikes me as a bit dubious in a record written after the fact.)

Incidentally, I'm going to call provisional bullshit on the "ancient Japanese haiku" quoted (without attribution) by Powell and Finkelstein (1971) on the subject of earthquake lights and "subsequently re-quoted in almost every EQL summary written":

The earth speaks softly
To the mountain
Which trembles
And lights the sky.

I'm not saying that such sentiments have never been expressed in poetry by a Japanese writer, but (a) I can't find the Japanese original of this anywhere (and it seems to me it would be very popular if it existed), and (b) that just seems like too much imagery to fit into a single haiku. Feel free as always to prove me wrong in comments!

I considered using my blog to spread useful information for those in dangerous areas, or updates on the Fukushima situation, but the great thing about 2011 is that there's just no need for me to do that. There are hundreds of bi-, tri- and multilingual people in Japan who have more free time to keep their information current. Why try to fragment the audience?

In any case, as regular readers have surely observed, breaking news isn't my thing. In times of danger, my animal instincts hurl me towards the nearest bookshelf, there to read records of similar dangers observed centuries before. So, today, I'm presenting Edo scholar Arai Hakuseki 新井白石 (1657-1725) on the 1703 Genroku Earthquake.

Around the time I first moved to Yushima, in the year of the Yin Water Sheep [癸未, i.e. 1703], on the twenty-second day of the eleventh month, just past midnight, the earth began to shake violently. I woke up, grabbed my sword-belt and left the room to see doors and paper screens collapsing all around, and when I went to where my family slept, I found them already up and out of the room. The rear of the house was near the base of a high cliff, so I took everyone out to the eastern courtyard and arranged some fallen doors to sit on, as I was afraid that the earth was split. After this, I threw on a kamishimo and dōfuku over that. "I must go to my lord [Tokugawa Ienobu 徳川家宣, then daimyō of Kōfu and still a half-decade away from being Shōgun]," I told my household. "Two or three servants, come with me. The rest of you, stay at the house," and hurried off. Thinking that I might be in danger on the road, I had gone inside the house while it was moving like a small boat on a wave and found the medicine box, which I then fastened to my belt; but when I had changed clothes I had completely forgotten about the medicine and so, shameful to recall, I left without it.

As I reached the east gate of the Myōjin shrine in Kanda, the earth shook violently again. The merchants' houses in this area were all flung open and many people had gathered in the streets, but, seeing light in their houses, I shouted to them as I passed: "If those houses collapse, they'll catch fire. Put out the lights!"

On the near side of Shōhei Bridge, I met Kagehira 景衡 [Hakuseki's brother-in-law] coming the other way, told him "I leave things in your hands" [あとの事、よきにはからひ給へ] and hurried on. I crossed the bridge and went south, then veered west, then was about to head south again when I saw someone on a motionless horse in the moonlight; it was Lord Fujieda of Wakasa. He had been brought to a stop by water of unknown depth and width which had come out when the earth had split. "Onward, men!" he said, and leapt over more than a jō of flowing water, after which his men followed suit. I wet my feet crossing the water, which made my sandals heavy and hard to walk in, so I put on new ones and hurried on.

As I reached Kanda Bridge, the earth shook violently again and I heard something like a mass of chopsticks being broken and a gathering of mosquitos buzzing: this was the sound of houses collapsing and people screaming. Rocks went flying as stone walls fell; dust rose and covered the sky. "Surely this has brought down the bridge," I thought, and indeed a gap three or four shaku wide yawned between the bridge and its platform. I leapt across the gap and ran through the gate to see the wooden panels spring loose from houses to lie in the street, like cloth fluttering in the wind.

I arrived at Tatsu Gate and, far in the distance, saw that flames were rising from my lord's mansion. As the light was quite low, I surmised that the inner rooms had collapsed and caught fire, which was deeply worrying. I remember feeling as if my soul had raced ahead of me while my feet remained in one place.

Four or five blocks ahead, I heard the sound of hoofbeats from behind and turned to see Fujieda rushing towards me. I had come this far but was not sure what lay ahead, so I said "My lord Fujieda of Wakasa, I worry about the nature of those flames." "Indeed," he said, "Forgive me for not dismounting," and hurried on. Finally I arrived at Hibiya Gate, where the guard box had fallen and I could hear the voice of some crushed and dying within. I saw a man who had dismounted from his horse there; it was Fujieda. Tiles had fallen from the northern and southern eaves of the tower gate to pile up in the street like a mountain, rendering it impassible to him on horseback. "Come on," I said, and we climbed over the tiles together to go through the lesser gate to see that a dormitory to the north of the mansion had collapsed and was now burning, and I was relieved to see that it was well separated from the mansion itself.

At this point, family issues forced me to break off the translation (and, indeed, I have no time to check it over properly), but here's the rest of the story. Fujieda and Hakuseki eventually make their way in through a delivery entrance and find affairs being conducted in a garden outside, the mansion itself being too dangerous. Ienobu eventually turns up, decides to go to work, later returns and makes a joke about how he hasn't seen so many people together in a garden since Ueno flower-viewing season when he was young ("我いとけなき時に上野の花見しものどものむれゐしをみしに似つかるかな"), and then has a talk with Hakuseki about work-life balance:

"Have you heard anything about your wife and children since the earthquake?" he asked me.

"I came here during the night and have been here since then, my lord. I know nothing of what has happened there."

"I remember hearing once on the way to my residence at Yanaka that your house was at the base of a high cliff."

"That is so, my lord."

"That is quite worrisome," he said. "These earthquakes will probably continue for days. You need not present yourself at work every time one occurs, if it is not as severe as the first. Now return home with all speed."

Hakuseki finally leaves the office to find servants still waiting for him (and sounds a bit surprised: "Have you been here all this time?" But no, they have been relieved, had breakfast, etc.)

Back at home, concerned for his books, Hakuseki decides to take his books out of his nurigome and bury them between layers of tatami mats instead, to keep them safe — but then returns home from work the next day to find that a neighboring house has fallen on his secret bookhole and somehow set it on fire, while the nurigome is completely unharmed. "What a waste of effort it was to dig that hole and bury my books!" he says to his servants once the fire is out, and everybody laughs. Freeze frame, roll credits.

A few people have e-mailed and/or commented to ask if I'm okay after the earthquakes in Japan on Friday. I am! Thank you for asking. I and my family were all extremely lucky.

My experience of the evening itself wasn't dramatic or interesting. I just spent a long time walking home, with only a short bus ride between two of the stations on my route to break the march up. It was fairly crowded, so that I was never more than a few yards from another long-distance pedestrian, but there was no pushing, no jostling, no panic. The power was completely out for most of my walk: no traffic lights, no streetlights, just headlights. Even when a train station was lit up and thrown open to would-be travelers who needed someplace to spend the night — and they all were — the surrounding area was completely dark. Very eerie in Japan, the land of the vending machine. Even eerier when I got back to my home town, where the lights were on and I saw people relaxing in bars and family restaurants as they would on any other day.

The whole "keep calm and carry on" thing has held up admirably over the weekend here in the Kantō region, despite a malfunctioning nuclear power plant a few prefectures north, shortages of bread and milk, and — in weeks to come — planned blackouts and severely reduced train schedules. I'm going to do my part by contributing to the power-saving effort rather than polishing this post any more.

If you have the resources and inclination, please consider donating to help those further north and less fortunate than me. And if you have a good connection for snow and fireflies, please let me know in comments.

The joy of life in the valley, having left the world,
is the call of an uguisu lingering in its nest

世を出でて溪に住みけるうれしさは古巣に残る鶯のこゑ

One of the challenges of Japanese poetry is that it is all so interconnected, and yet each piece is so small, that the authenticity of your pleasure is often in doubt. What I mean by "authenticity" here is fuzzy; perhaps the extent to which what you get out of the poem matches what the author intentionally put in, or the degree to which your enjoyment of the poem conforms to that of a hypothetical super-scholar with perfect understanding (and recall) of the entire history of Japanese literature, history, orthography, and so on. Of course, both of these are ultimately unknowable things: we can never know exactly what authors meant, and no-one can know everything. The reality is that we are all lost in the woods, but some of us have better tracking skills than others.

I came across the poem at the start of this post reading the Iwanami Bunko edition of Saigyō's Sanka shū 山家集 ("Poems of a Mountain Home," as Burton Watson has it), edited by Sasaki Nobutsuna 佐々木信綱. It caught my attention because it used 溪 for tani, "valley," instead of the more common 谷.

In Chinese, as I understand it, these two characters have separate meanings: 溪 is a mountain stream or creek, while 谷 is a valley, water optional. But in modern Japanese dictionaries, 溪 is usually given as an alternate way to write 谷 in the sense of tani, a native Japanese word that doesn't distinguish between the senses described above. At best, 溪 will have its own entry under the Sino-Japanese pronunciation kei, glossed as "谷、谷川" ("valley, valley stream").

So 溪 is much less frequent in Japanese writing than 谷, and when it does appear it is usually as part of a Sinitic vocabulary item (e.g. keikoku 渓谷, i.e. "渓 and 谷," which is defined in the dictionary as... "tani"). I first encountered it in Chinese poetry, and that's still what it invokes for me: the sort of sweeping yet intricate nature-talk that the Japanese tanka form is physically incapable of reproducing. So, in an otherwise simple tanka like this, 溪 is evocative and charming, linking Saigyō to the grand continental tradition of mountain hermitry.

But is this interpretation "authentic"? Maybe Saigyō really wanted to emphasize the river in his valley (this seems unlikely, though, as it's not relevant to any other part of the poem). Or maybe he didn't even use this character here — maybe it only appears in the edition I have due to some weird decision by editor Sasaki or some intermediate scribe. (This poem is actually marked with the ○ that indicates that Sasaki interpolated it into his edition from a book other than his main source, so maybe it's a quirk of this non-main text he was referencing.)

The next big point of interest in the poem is that Saigyō finds joy in the uguisu staying in its nest, as opposed to every other tanka poet ever, who waxed joyful when the uguisu left its winter nest. As poem 14 in the Kokin waka shū sez:

うぐひすの谷よりいづるこゑなくば春くることをたれかしらまし
Without the voice of the uguisu come out of the valley, who would know when spring came? (Ōe no Chisato)

Unlike Ōe no Chisato, though, Saigyō lives in the valley. It makes sense that he would appreciate the uguisu still nesting there with him. And, in fact, the Sanka shū contains many poems about uguisu and their nests, which make it even clearer what Saigyō means. Here's a string of four with the heading "On the disappearance of the voice of the uguisu from the valley where one lives" (住みける谷に鶯の聲せずなりにければ):

ふる巣うとく谷の鶯なりはてば我やかはりてなかむとすらむ
鶯は谷のふるすをいでぬともわがゆくへをばわすれざらなむ
鶯はわれをすもりにたのみてや谷のほかへはいでてゆくらむ
春のほどはわが住む庵の友になりてふる巣ないでそたにの鶯

"The uguisu are long gone from their nests; maybe I should cry in their place."
"Though the uguisu have left their old nests, I hope they don't forget where I am."
"Will the uguisu ask me to watch their nests when they go out from the valley?"
"Don't leave your nests this spring, o uguisu of the valley; stay by my hut and be my friend."

That last one is particularly relevant, I think.

Are we missing anything else? Almost certainly, but let's review. Because the nightingale tends to spend its time in mountains and valleys, it is symbolic to an extent of hermitude as well as spring. Their call is sometimes transcribed "Hō-hōke kyō," which might seem relevant to a poem written by a monk — but no! Yamaguchi Nakami 山口仲美's Chin chin chidori informs us that this onomatopoeia wasn't thought up, or at least wasn't widespread, until the Edo period. When Saigyō was writing, it seems that people mostly thought it said "Hitoku, hitoku" ("Someone's coming, someone's coming"), or "TsÅ«ki-hi-hoshi" ("Mooon, sun, stars").

Besides, in another poem Saigyō more or less explicitly rejects any uguisu-religion connection:

鶯の聲にさとりをうべきかは聞くうれしさもはかなかりけり
Find enlightenment in the uguisu's call? [No,] the joy of hearing that is fleeting too

What else? Well, maybe there's some irony in Saigyō rejoicing in the uguisu's lingering when one of his most famous poems is a lament about failing to leave the capital and worldly things behind despite having renounced the world (世の中をすてゝ捨てえぬ心地して都はなれぬわが身なりけり)... Or maybe we're supposed to read it as meaning "the voice of the uguisu that [seems to] linger in the nest [after the actual uguisu has left]"... but there comes a point at which you have to either re-enrol in grad school or move on to the next 31 morae.