The second section of Chapter 2, “Prose and Verse,” is the longest in the chapter, at about 10,000 characters. Tracing the history of verse and prose in both West and Japan, Mishima offers his own distinctive view of the rhythm of Japanese sound. (Page numbers follow the edition described in the overview article. English renderings of the quotations are ToL translations.)
The West began with verse. And Japan?
Western literary history began with verse. Prose arose in Greece only after historical literature appeared; before that, epic, drama, and lyric alike were all composed in verse. Japanese literature, too, produced a great poetry collection early, the Man’yōshū. But the Kojiki before it, Mishima says, is prose handed down by the reciters (katari-be), and though it has rhythmic passages here and there, the whole cannot be called verse.
Attempting alliteration in a language without it
Mishima points plainly to the phonological constraints of Japanese. Japanese finds it hard to attach anything like alliteration, and has no rhyme at all. Even so, the Man’yōshū attempted alliteration-like effects several times, as a kind of play by people of that age. Not strict alliteration, but the use of makurakotoba (pillow words) produced an alliteration-like effect in many places, he says.
Mishima gives, as an example, poems exchanged between Empress Jitō and her old nurse, Shii no Omina.
不聴（いな）といへど強ふる志斐（しひ）のが強語（しひがたり）このごろ聞かずて朕（われ）恋ひにけり（持統天皇、志斐嫗に賜へる御歌）
いなといへど語れ語れと詔（の）らせこそ志斐いは奏（まを）せ強語（しひがたり）とこの（志斐嫗の和へ奉れる歌）
And another poem.
ははそばの母のみことおほろかにこころつくしておもふらむその子なれやも
Mishima notes that Homer’s phrase “bright-eyed goddess Athena” is also a kind of pillow word, and finds it interesting that East and West follow the same path here.
Thirty-one syllables and the 7-5 meter — “the golden ratio of Japanese”
After the age of the Man’yōshū’s long poems (chōka), Japanese poetry, Mishima says, settled into thirty-one syllables alone; after that, one had to rely on imported Chinese verse. This thirty-one-syllable law of 5-7-5-7-7 is described thus:
たとえば日本語の黄金分割のように動かされない韻律上の法則になり、（p.24）
(It became, as it were, an immovable metrical law, like the golden ratio of Japanese,)
This 7-5 or 5-7 meter long remained the tradition of the recited narrative, passing from war chronicles to Buddhist hymns, to old jōruri, and, through the golden age of jōruri, even ordinary prose came to be written in a style modeled on jōruri. At the end of the Edo period, Kawatake Mokuami perfected 7-5-meter lines, and this influence, Mishima says, reached even Tsubouchi Shōyō’s Meiji-era Kiri Hitoha and the first translations of Shakespeare.
The 7-5 meter alive today
The 7-5 tradition still lives on today, in an unexpected form, Mishima says.
「注意一秒 怪我一生」「ライトはいつも下向きに」「ハンドルは腕で握るな心で握れ」
「くしゃみ一回 ルル三錠」「父さん温泉 僕スキー」「有楽町で逢いましょう」
(“One second’s carelessness, a lifetime’s injury.” “Headlights always pointed down.” “Don’t grip the wheel with your arms — grip it with your heart.”
“One sneeze, three Lulu tablets.” “Dad’s at the hot spring, I’m skiing.” “Let’s meet in Yūrakuchō.”)
We can no longer take to 7-5-meter prose itself. But the peculiarly Japanese rhythm that the 7-5 meter carries, Mishima says, still lurks somewhere within us.
The visual letter, and the aural letter
Mishima brings out another contrast. Because Japanese has pictographic characters (kanji), it considers, almost instinctively, both the visual and the aural effect of prose. Mishima recounts asking a foreign novelist whether he considers the visual effect of print; the answer was an unqualified no.
Here Mishima touches on the method Itō Sei invented in Josei ni kansuru jūni-shō (Twelve Chapters on Women), of frequently writing kanji terms in katakana.
たとえば伊藤整氏が『女性に関する十二章』のなかで、頻繁に漢語を片カナで書く手法を創始しました。（p.28–29）
(For instance, Mr. Itō Sei, in Twelve Chapters on Women, originated the technique of frequently writing Sino-Japanese words in katakana.)
Writing kanji terms in katakana, Mishima says, produces a strange parody effect that strips abstract concepts of their pomposity, a comic effect. At the same time, he says, through kanji we learned the troublesome thing called visual beauty, and lost the transparent chain of feeling that kana prose once had. So, he concludes, an attempt like Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s in Mōmoku Monogatari, to build a modern novelistic style in hiragana alone, is nothing but a mere revivalist experiment.
Saikaku, and the two-faced style
Near the end of the section, Mishima cites the prose of Ihara Saikaku as an extreme example of the mixture of verse and prose. In the Genroku era, Saikaku’s prose depicts merchants’ greed for money, calculation, the psychological maneuvering of courtesans, the feelings of the playboy — things that could no longer be written in the transparent prose of the Heian period, and crystallized, through his own peculiar rhythm, into “a decorative, two-faced style that is prose and verse at once” (gist, near p. 26). Mishima states his own view that in Japan there is no great need to distinguish prose and verse so sharply.
What to keep in mind when reading
First, Mishima himself notes that the Man’yōshū’s alliteration-like attempts are “not strict alliteration.” Explaining pillow words as a kind of alliteration is Mishima’s own interpretation; whether it matches standard classification in Japanese philology as such, this article has not confirmed.
Second, the point that the 7-5 meter lives on in modern slogans and advertising is backed by concrete examples and is easy to check. The judgment “the golden ratio of Japanese,” on the other hand, is Mishima’s aesthetic evaluation, not something verified quantitatively.
Third, quotations from public-domain classics (the Man’yōshū, the Tale of Genji, the Tale of the Heike, Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko) are treated as originals, apart from Mishima’s copyright. They can be read on their own, apart from Mishima’s interpretation.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| West and Japan | The West began with verse. Japan’s Kojiki cannot be called verse as a whole |
| The Man’yōshū’s device | With no alliteration or rhyme, pillow words gave an alliteration-like effect |
| Thirty-one syllables | 5-7-5-7-7 as “the golden ratio of Japanese.” The 7-5 meter runs from war tales to jōruri to modern slogans |
| Sight and sound | Because of pictographic characters, visual effect too is considered. Itō Sei’s and Tanizaki’s experiments |
| Saikaku | A distinctive, decorative style that is prose yet also verse |
In a nutshell — Mishima saw Japanese, lacking alliteration and rhyme, build its own sound rhythm through pillow words and the 7-5 meter — a rhythm still alive today in advertising slogans.