The Same Moon Shines on All: The Lives and Selected Poems of Yanagawa Seigan and Kōran

The Same Moon Shines on All features select poems by two important cultural figures of 19th century Japan, the husband and wife, Yanagawa Seigan (1789–1858) and Yanagawa Kōran (1804–1879), compiled, edited, and translated by Jonathan Chaves and Matthew Fraleigh. In his translator’s preface, Chaves explains that both poets wrote in “literary Chinese or Sinitic, the ancient version of the Chinese language reserved for the writing of literary works” and that they would’ve had to “master a poetics as different as can be from Japanese poetics.” Seigan and Kōran’s complex oeuvres, spanning two cultural and linguistic systems—which, as Chaves points out, are “radically different” both in terms of language and poetics—are expertly brought to life in this volume. The book is divided into two parts, with Seigan’s poems comprising the first 100 pages of the book and the remaining 40 or so pages dedicated to the work of Kōran, who, as Fraleigh notes, was “one of the most outstanding” women writing in a genre dominated by men. 

One intriguing aspect of these poems is the fusing of Chinese idiom and Japanese landscape, as in Seigan’s “On the Sea of Fugen, Encountering a Great Wind,” which is set in Japan’s Inland Sea while invoking Chi You, the ancient Chinese god of war. The opening stanza plays with visual perception:

One black cloud, a single dot 
smaller than an umbrella,
Then—suddenly, a vast canopy,
       shadowing half the sky!

The sea wind is blown up to the scale of “one hundred monstrous creatures” before it calms:

And does this differ
    from the pleasure and anger
    shown us by men in this world?

The descriptive powers of Seigan are such that the poems are never merely allegorical—even without the comparison to human nature, the poem holds its own.

In addition to writing poetry, Kōran was also an accomplished painter and often draws interesting connections between her visual and poetic practices. In an untitled poem, she paints a picture with methods available only in verse:

All my life I’ve wasted effort 
    trying to paint pictures;
Suddenly, I’m in a picture,
    Traveling Through Autumn Mountains.

The poems and the exceptional introductory essay by Fraleigh offer a glimpse into the world of 19th century Japan as perceived by two brilliant minds alert to the sublime, as Seigan writes: “Our drunken shadows scattered about, / wine jars pour for us: / A startled magpie’s single cry—”