SOURCE: "Symbolic Imagery in the Poetry of Izumi Shikibu: Parallels with French Symbolism," Tamkang Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 1,2,3,4, Autumn 1987-Summer 1988, pp. 217-26.

In the following essay, Odagiri examines Izumi's use of symbolic images in her poetry and finds certain parallels with that of Charles Baudelaire.

The lyrical poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), who is one of the representative Tanka poets in modern Japan, in her critical work "Akiko's Koten Kanshô" ("Akiko's View of Classics"), comments on the symbolic character of the Japanese court poetry¹ (waka). She explains that symbolism is a technique in which one word has a central meaning and another implicit meaning.

Falling down on the bed
 Indifferent to the disheveled black hair
 I remember him, who touched me softly.2

In this poem "disheveled black hair" suggests not only the disheveled black hair itself but also a mind disordered by sorrow. So the phrase "disheveled black hair...