A-Yokai-A-Day: The Incident at Nunobiki Falls, Settsu Province; or, The Pilgrims’ Poems

Tonight’s story is another one featuring snakes. This one was a struggle to translate because it contains my least favorite thing to translate: poetry.

Poetry is hard to translate in any language, but I think it’s especially difficult between Japanese and English. That:s because the things that make poetry beautiful in each of these languages are totally different from each other, and it all gets lost in translation.

Japanese poems have specific rules, and are usually restricted to specific rhythmic templates. If you went to school in the US, you probably remember studying haiku or tanka at some point. I remember absolutely hating haiku especially when I was younger. I thought it was lame, boring, made no sense, and had absolutely no artistic value to it. To be honest, I still do a little bit, at least when it comes to English haiku. Japanese haiku, on the other hand, is gorgeous. And I never knew it until I actually started reading them in Japanese.

That’s because everything that is beautiful about Japanese poetry is bleached away when it is translated, leaving it just a husk of what it once was. For example, the short length of these poems means that words must be chosen very carefully; but because of the nature of the Japanese language, there are tons of homophones to choose from. Thus, Japanese poems can be deeply metaphoric, containing 2 or more entirely different meanings that change depending on who is speaking, who is listening, or other context. They also sometimes reference classical Japanese or Chinese works, which only make sense when when the reader has knowledge of those. You simply can’t translate something with that much contextual information packed into such a short phrase. Translators have to make a lot of hard decisions on how to translate a particular poem, and doing so strips it of its alternate meanings, its literary references, and of course the beautiful rhythmic structure that gives it its flow.

It’s not a one way problem. In the same way, Shakespeare simply fails in Japanese, and don’t even think about trying to translate limericks. Some things can only really be enjoyed in their native languages.

So with that in mind, please forgive my awkward translations of the three poems in this story. I’ve translated their literal meaning, but they retain none of the grace and beauty that they had in the original Japanese. Each of these poems contains double meanings, referring to the falls themselves and also to cloth or weaving. This is because Nunobiki Falls literally means “cloth pulling” falls, presumably because of the way the water looks like threads pouring down the mountain. The lack of a graceful way of translating them really frustrates me, and it cheapens the women’s brilliance and their impact on the story. Sorry, this is the best I could do for A-Yokai-A-Day.

The Incident at Nunobiki Falls, Settsu Province; or, The Pilgrims’ Poems

Nunobiki Falls in Settsu Province is a place where women are forbidden to enter; yet, one time, three women came here together and asked the chief priest, “We have heard that there is a famous place called Nunobiki Falls on this mountain. Please show it to us.”

The chief priest was surprised and said, “Now, now, where did you all come from? This mountain is off limits to women. Leave this mountain immediately.”

To this, one of the women composed a poem:

What is the point of folding up clothes and hiding them away in the mountains? Let the people see Nunobiki Falls.

And the three women turned to leave.

The priest thought these women seemed to have a special quality, so he decided to show them the waterfall. When he took them to see it, the women gazed at the waterfall and were delighted. The priest said, “Let this mountain be a story told for years to come. The other two ladies should each compose a poem as well.”

One woman said:

Long have I thought about this woven cloth. Today I cut and dyed it, and now I have worn it.

The other woman said:

The villagers of Settsu Province‘s Ikuta and Koyano see these Nunobiki Falls without leaving home.

Then the three women approached the base of the waterfall and seemed to wash their hands in the water, but then all three of them turned into three meter long serpents and climbed up to the top of the waterfall.

One thought on “A-Yokai-A-Day: The Incident at Nunobiki Falls, Settsu Province; or, The Pilgrims’ Poems

  1. Pingback: A-Yokai-A-Day: The Apparitions in Yoshida Sōtei’s House; or, The Power of Poetry | MatthewMeyer.net

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