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A well-known section of the ''Tales of Ise'' describes a trip taken by a minor official and his guests to Nunobiki Falls , near Kobe . They begin a poetry-writing contest, to which one of the guests, a commander of the guards, contributes:

:Which, I wonder, is higher-
:This waterfall or the fall of my tears
:As I wait in vain,
:Hoping today or tomorrow
:To rise in the world.

The minor official offers his own composition:

:It looks as though someone
:Must be unstringing
:Those clear cascading gems.
:Alas! My sleeves are too narrow
:To hold them allTranslation by Helen McCullough, quoted in Morse, 42..


NOTES






REFERENCES

  • 'Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston', with essays by Sebastian Dobson, Anne Nishimura Morse, and Frederic A. Sharf (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004), 42.

  • Asia Society , cited 11 April 2006.

  • Morse, Anne Nishimura. 'Souvenirs of "Old Japan": Meiji-Era Photography and the Meisho Tradition'. In 'Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston' (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004).

  • The New York Public Library, s.v. "Ise monogatari" , cited 11 April 2006.