Mostly
unheard of in Western culture, where the document most commonly
associated with death is a will—that binding legal document
descriptive of property but possessing little poetry—jisei,
or death poetry, is completed near the time of death; a profound,
personal epitaph for a once-in-a-lifetime event—a suitably
fitting farewell to one's life.
While death as a theme in poetry is not uncommon—witness
death as one of Emily
Dickinson's main themes (here, in "More
Than the Grave is Closed to Me"):
|
More
than the Grave is closed to me |
|
The
Grave and that Eternity |
|
To
which the Grave adheres |
|
I
cling to nowhere till I fall |
|
The
Crash of nothing, yet of all |
|
How
similar appears |
or as sublime meditation on the nature of reality ("I and
Death" by Sri Chinmoy)
|
My
body saw death |
|
Without
fear. |
|
My
heart conquered death |
|
With
love. |
|
My
soul embraced death |
| With
compassion. |
| I
employ death |
| With
no hesitation. |
a poem written to mark one's own death or, more accurately,
to uniquely commemorate a life lived, is a practice that reached
its eventual refinement in Japan—particularly
within Zen
Buddhism. It was also common in China
until the twentieth century.
Jisei, by convention, are written in a graceful, natural manner,
and never mention death explicitly, using, instead, metaphoric
references to nature, often in the form of sunsets, autumn,
or falling cherry blossoms.
|
When
autumn winds blow |
|
not
one leaf remains |
|
the
way it was. |
|
-Togyu |
As elsewhere in Japanese art, feelings of bitter-sweetness and
impermanence dominate, a feature of the Zen Buddhist-informed
aesthetic mono no aware (a sensitivity to things), a
conception of beauty virtually part of the national character.
While the popular image of jisei is as a part of ceremonial
seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide), death poems were also
written by Zen monks, haiku
poets, and from ancient times literate people on their deathbeds.
Poems were not always composed the moment before death; respected
poets would sometimes be consulted well in advance for their
assistance and, even after death, one's poem could be polished
or even rewritten by others—a deed never mentioned lest
the deceased's legacy be tarnished.
|
Had
I not known |
|
that
I was dead |
| already |
| I
would have mourned the loss of my life. |
|
|
Normally highly poetic and somewhat oblique, Jisei could also
contain elements of a traditional will; not the mundane affairs
of an estate to be settled but, for example, reconciling differences
between estranged relatives.
Prominent exponents of jisei include the famous haiku poet Basho;
Asano
Naganori, the daimyo (fuedal leader) whose forced
suicide was avenged by the forty-seven ronin—now
almost a national myth; and Yukio
Mishima, a prominent Japanese writer of the twentieth century
who, in 1970, bizarrely committed seppuku in the traditional
manner.
|
Sick
on my journey, only my dreams will wander the withered
fields. |
|
-Basho |
