Will the Classics Wither Away?

In my previous post, I had mentioned how some people believed that Matsuo Basho, the famous haiku poet, may have been a ninja spy when he made his trip to the northern part of Japan in 1689.  This is because the area where Basho was born and raised was the home for a variety of ninja and the journey as described by Basho in Oku no Hosomichi is impossible for the average human with the methods of transportation available at the time, but as I stated last time, I think those people are forgetting that Basho is a poet and an artist, and as such took a few liberties with the truth. 

Basho himself clearly states the reason for his trip to the northern part of Japan, away from ever-busy, densely populated Edo (modern-day Tokyo): he was impressed with the works of Saigyo (1118-1190), a Buddhist hermit and poet who lived during the a time of major political and social upheaval in Japan, and Basho wanted to see if he could find the same majestic scenery that Saigyo had described in his much longer poems centuries before him. 

In the 19th section of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, he describes his feelings about his journey in the footsteps of Saigyo when he finds a monument that had been inscribed with Chinese characters on it from almost a thousand years earlier:   

According to the date given at the end of the inscription, this monument was erected during the reign of Emperor Shomu (724-49), and had stood here ever since, winning the increasing admiration of poets through the years. In this ever changing world where mountains crumble, rivers change their courses, roads are deserted, rocks are buried, and old trees yield to young shoots, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a thousand years to be the living memory of the ancients. I felt as if I were in the presence of the ancients themselves, and, forgetting all the troubles I had suffered on the road, rejoiced in the utter happiness of this joyful moment, not without tears in my eyes.

                The above is taken from this website: http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/basho2.html

In other words, Basho wept with joy in finding some physical evidence that connected him with the 'poets through the years'.  That is the beauty of art in its myriad forms; whether it is a famous painting, a statue, a movie, a book, a song, a poem, or anything else, when we encounter the works left behind by ancient masters, and feel that connection that crosses the centuries, we too may feel that 'utter happiness' in knowing that we are not alone, and we come away feeling that our troubles were totally worth it. This is especially true if we understand the Buddhist sense of impermanence, when things are expected to change and even vanish from existence, and in time, from our collective memory. 

I can sometimes understand why students hesitate to get caught up in the Classics of literature. I never really understood Shakespeare as a child, and hated being forced to read "Romeo and Juliet" in junior high school-- the language was uncool and the social settings were not anything like I knew.  "Hamlet" was a little more passable, but at the age I read it, my classmates were still giggling about the word 'codpiece'.  "The Three Musketeers" was too florid and I settled for the comic book adaptation and the movies instead.  "Great Expectations" was easier to read, but the only real great expectation I had was to finish the book, which was mandated reading. I have always loved to read (I chose to read "Shogun" by James Clavell in high school before the mini-series came out on TV, and my classmates thought I was nuts) but the Classics were hard to appreciate at such a young age. 

When I was teaching in Japan, I found that the youth there had little appreciation for Classical Japanese literature.  Tosa Nikki (The Tosa Diary, written in the 10th century), Hojoki (An Account of My Hut, written in 1212), and Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North, in the late 17th century) are all stories in Classical Japanese that I have read, mostly on my own after graduating from college. I had to use college-prep books that had an explanation of the old grammar along with a modern-day translation to enable me to understand the content, but in the end, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the books. I have even memorized the opening lines of Hojoki, and have used them to impress the Japanese on my knowledge of their literature.

The Japanese students I taught, however, hated Classical Japanese with a passion, which I believe stems from the fact that these ancient texts are used by colleges and universities in Japan to weed out applicants for study in their entrance exams, and due to the difficulty of the test questions, the focus in teaching Classical Japanese is not the content of the Classics, but the esoteric grammatical rules used by the writers of yore.  The students at that age should not be forced to remember how to parse the grammar of some 'dead' language that is practical only for one short period in their lives (i.e., when taking a college entrance exam) but that is where the focus of the college entrance exams lies.  I believe the content of the Classics is far more important-- that is why the works have been admired for centuries after the death of the writer.  It doesn't matter, though, as even the students who may never qualify for a higher education because they didn't have the stamina to memorize obscure grammar rules have to drudge through the rote learning of beautiful text that suddenly withers and turns into something horribly dreary.