Appreciate
Outline
The text of the rōei Taizan (‘Mt. Tai’) comprises two lines of parallel prose taken from a standard Chinese history, Shiji (‘Records of the Grand Historian’).
This work deals with the history of China from earliest times until 95 BC, and was compiled by Sima Qian (?145–86 BC). The text is from the biography of Li Si (d. 208 BC), a prime minister of the ancient Chinese Qin dynasty. Fujiwara no Kintō included it in the ‘Mountains and Waters’ section of his Wakan rōei-shū (‘Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing’).
It is one of the 14 rōei included in the Meiji sentei-fu (‘Selected Scores of Meiji’), one of seven in the second collection of scores of 1888.
Accompaniment is supplied by one each of three winds: mouthorgan shō, reedpipe hichiriki, and transverse flute ryūteki,.
Form of the piece (text and translation)
| ichi-no-ku | solo | taizan wa dojou o yuzurazu | Mt. Tai yields up none of its earth, |
|---|---|---|---|
| unison | karugayue ni yoku sono takaki koto o nasu | and thus it reaches its full height; | |
| ni-no-ku | solo | kakai wa sairyū o- | neither river nor ocean |
| unison | -o itowazu | reject the thinnest stream, | |
| san-no-ku | solo | karugayue ni | and thus |
| unison | yoku sono fukaki koto o nasu | they reach their full depths. |
Points for appreciation
Mt. Tai (Taishan) of the title is a mountain in China’s Shandong province, the easternmost of the Five Great Mountains of China, and has been a place of religious worship for more than 3,000 years. The ‘river’ and ‘ocean’ of the second line of the couplet refer to the Yellow River and the East China Sea.
In this text, Li Si is encouraging the future emperor of the Chin dynasty to accept the tribute of even the smallest of powers, since no assistance is to be regarded as insignificant.
