Songs of the Geishas: gīshaoun key gīt

Songs of the Geishas: “gīshaoun key gīt”

Mohammad Sanaullah Dar, better known as Meeraji (25 May 1912 – 3 November 1949).

“gīshaoun key gīt” from: Mashriq o Maghreb ke naghme (Songs of East and West)

by Meeraji/ Mohammad Sanaullah Dar (1912-1949)

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Translated into English by Maryam Iraj

To find the original essay in Urdu, please turn to pages 543-555 here.

Courtesan Playing the Samisen – Isoda Koryusai c. 1785. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

These songs are in the ancient fashion of Japanese poetry, and a few of the songs are incredibly famous. Irrespective of the time of a song’s creation, it comes to life once it is presented in the everyday life of people. These songs are sung or hummed on befitting occasion with the help of a delicate a three-stringed, rubab-like musical instrument called the “Shamisen”.[1] The elegant tinkling of the shamisen evokes a cosmic echo in the heart of a Japanese man. And this echo reawakens the the love story of a teahouse that had long been consigned to oblivion, or reminds of a long forgotten romance that once took place in private quarters in Yoshiwara. Their notes are not upbeat or loud but rather elegant, subtle and, to an extent, sharp and piercing. 

Every geisha plays the shamisen and sings this song, and in these very episodes, we get fragmented glimpses of these Japanese courtesans and their tortured and sad lives. [2] If there were to be a poetic name attributed to these songs, it would be “awaited”. [3] The distant thought with which these women struggle is that of being, one day, married to a kind hearted customer and thus freed of their sexual labor and a joyless life. She keeps waiting for the day when her future husband will visit the courtesan house and release her from her captivity after paying the predetermined amount to the mistress of the house.
   

Owners of courtesan-houses buy girls in their adolescence from their impoverished and greedy parents. For a long time, or at least their entire youth, these girls spend their lives serving these bonds. This business is not considered trivial in Japan, the period of training for a courtesan is long and onerous; they must learn to dance, to sing, to play at least one instrument skillfully, and to be well-versed in all manner of customs and fashions as, for example, in the art of tea-ceremonies, fashion, comportment and floral arrangement. A courtesan must observe such etiquettes with grace and an elegant disposition. 

Autumn Landscape, Yosa Buson (1975). Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

We can discern an all-encompassing passion in these songs, as we can in all Japanese poetry. In fact, all variety of Japanese cultural phenomenon are characterized by this same fascinating mannerism. As the Japanese courtesan’s education is achieved through steady method and careful arrangement, the overwhelmingly romantic quality of these Japanese songs exhibits as a kind of flaw or imperfection. It is widely agreed that, for a Western scholar, translating a Japanese song is like capturing the moves of a dancing-star. A number of emotions and feelings burst forth in the Japanese heart and within them, particularly a special few. For example, the song of a Koel evokes the emotions of sadness (and this is true in Hindi poetry as well). In Japanese theatre dramas, the sound of the Koel symbolizes tragedy or is a bad omen, warning the spectators of impending trouble. The presence of the moon reaffirms love. Autumn suggests mutually-strained relations between the lover and beloved. Apart from this, “makurakotoba” (literally, pillow words) or figures of speech carry certain meanings. For example, “lady” and delicate” and “easy” and “eternal”. In addition to these, the art of double entendre is also a beloved practice. Apart from this, there are many words that are used as a tool to redirect the reader from one thought to another. And there are also synonyms exclusively used for rhyming. 

It must be notes that these songs by geishas were not written under some set of rules or method of versification, as is the case with the rest of Japanese poetry. These Japanese songs were written in the fashion of our own rural songs. The songs of the geishas are difficult to translate in comparison with other Japanese poetry. But in terms of their neatness as sketches, these songs are more advanced than other forms of poetry. And we also find more passion and delicacy of thought in them. And because the writers of these poems, like the writers of rural songs, did not associate with the common orders of religion, education, and civility, in these poems we find a natural simplicity blended with the slight glimmers of poetic affectation to give a strange lightness and candor.
   

Lacquer Paintings of Various Subjects – Bonsai, Shibata Zeshin. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

The tendency towards restraint is a common trend in Japan. For example, the constricting of feet for women (or foot-binding) is a fashion. From methods of constraining giant trees to artificially grow as dwarfed plants [4] to forcefully bringing these human butterflies from the wide expanses of Japanese villages to be caged  in a laborious life sentence at Yoshiwara, all this manifests a distinct taste for confinement. Hence, it is only natural and inevitable that the inhabitants of those cells will effected by their restrained environment. And so their feelings are unveiled in a terse and constrained manner. While small feet might be the source of a joke in other cultures, and tree-like small plants might carry a different connotation in different countries, the sentiment of oppression and enslaved can, nonetheless, be understood worldwide. There is a universal appeal to these songs which any human being can appreciate with fondness and freewill. 

The following songs have been translated in the fashion of English free verse to retain the asymmetrical quality of these songs. The theme and spirit of the subjects of these poems are specifically focused. In some instances, an Indian equivalent has been given in place of the Japanese example to avoid the unpleasant hindrance which unfamiliar lexicon can create during reading.