Semi (CICADae)

[Decoration]

Koe ni mina Naki-shimote ya-- Semi no kara!

--_j.a.panese Love-Song_

The voice having been all consumed by crying, there remains only the sh.e.l.l of the _semi!_

I

A CELEBRATED Chinese scholar, known in j.a.panese literature as Riku-Un, wrote the following quaint account of the Five Virtues of the Cicada:--

"I.--The Cicada has upon its head certain figures or signs.[26]

These represent its [written] characters, style, literature.

[26] The curious markings on the head of one variety of j.a.panese _semi_ are believed to be characters which are names of souls.

"II.--It eats nothing belonging to earth, and drinks only dew.

This proves its cleanliness, purity, propriety.

"III.--It always appears at a certain fixed time. This proves its fidelity, sincerity, truthfulness.

"IV.--It will not accept wheat or rice. This proves its probity, uprightness, honesty.

"V.--It does not make for itself any nest to live in. This proves its frugality, thrift, economy."

We might compare this with the beautiful address of Anacreon to the cicada, written twenty-four hundred years ago: on more than one point the Greek poet and the Chinese sage are in perfect accord:--

"_We deem thee happy, O Cicada, because, having drunk, like a king, only a little dew, thou dost chirrup on the tops of trees.

For all things whatsoever that thou seest in the fields are thine, and whatsoever the seasons bring forth. Yet art thou the friend of the tillers of the land,--from no one harmfully taking aught. By mortals thou art held in honor as the pleasant harbinger of summer; and the Muses love thee. Phoebus himself loves thee, and has given thee a shrill song. And old age does not consume thee. O thou gifted one,--earth-born, song-loving, free from pain, having flesh without blood,--thou art nearly equal to the G.o.ds!_"[27]

[27] In this and other citations from the Greek anthology, I have depended upon Burges'

translation.

And we must certainly go back to the old Greek literature in order to find a poetry comparable to that of the j.a.panese on the subject of musical insects. Perhaps of Greek verses on the cricket, the most beautiful are the lines of Meleager: "_O cricket, the soother of slumber ... weaving the thread of a voice that causes love to wander away!_" ...

There are j.a.panese poems scarcely less delicate in sentiment on the chirruping of night-crickets; and Meleager's promise to reward the little singer with gifts of fresh leek, and with "drops of dew cut up small," sounds strangely j.a.panese. Then the poem attributed to Anyte, about the little girl Myro making a tomb for her pet cicada and cricket, and weeping because Hades, "hard to be persuaded," had taken her playthings away, represents an experience familiar to j.a.panese child-life. I suppose that little Myro--(how freshly her tears still glisten, after seven and twenty centuries!)--prepared that "common tomb"

for her pets much as the little maid of Nippon would do to-day, putting a small stone on top to serve for a monument. But the wiser j.a.panese Myro would repeat over the grave a certain Buddhist prayer.

It is especially in their poems upon the cicada that we find the old Greeks confessing their love of insect-melody: witness the lines in the Anthology about the tettix caught in a spider's snare, and "making lament in the thin fetters" until freed by the poet;--and the verses by Leonidas of Tarentum picturing the "unpaid minstrel to wayfaring men"

as "sitting upon lofty trees, warmed with the great heat of summer, sipping the dew that is like woman's milk;"--and the dainty fragment of Meleager, beginning: "_Thou vocal tettix, drunk with drops of dew, sitting with thy serrated limbs upon the tops of petals, thou givest out the melody of the lyre from thy dusky skin_." ... Or take the charming address of Evenus to a nightingale:--

"_Thou Attic maiden, honey-fed, hast chirping seized a chirping cicada, and bearest it to thy unfledged young,--thou, a twitterer, the twitterer,--thou, the winged, the well-winged,--thou, a stranger, the stranger,--thou, a summer-child, the summer-child!

Wilt thou not quickly cast it from thee? For it is not right, it is not just, that those engaged in song should perish by the mouths of those engaged in song._"

On the other hand, we find j.a.panese poets much more inclined to praise the voices of night-crickets than those of semi. There are countless poems about semi, but very few which commend their singing. Of course the semi are very different from the cicadae known to the Greeks. Some varieties are truly musical; but the majority are astonishingly noisy,--so noisy that their stridulation is considered one of the great afflictions of summer. Therefore it were vain to seek among the myriads of j.a.panese verses on semi for anything comparable to the lines of Evenus above quoted; indeed, the only j.a.panese poem that I could find on the subject of a cicada caught by a bird, was the following:--

Ana kanashi!

Tobi ni toraruru Semi no koe.

--RANSETSU.

Ah! how piteous the cry of the semi seized by the kite!

Or "caught by a boy" the poet might equally well have observed,--this being a much more frequent cause of the pitiful cry. The lament of Nicias for the tettix would serve as the elegy of many a semi:--

"_No more shall I delight myself by sending out a sound from my quick-moving wings, because I have fallen into the savage hand of a boy, who seized me unexpectedly, as I was sitting under the green leaves._"

Here I may remark that j.a.panese children usually capture semi by means of a long slender bamboo tipped with bird-lime (_mochi_). The sound made by some kinds of semi when caught is really pitiful,--quite as pitiful as the twitter of a terrified bird. One finds it difficult to persuade oneself that the noise is not a _voice_ of anguish, in the human sense of the word "voice," but the production of a specialized exterior membrane. Recently, on hearing a captured semi thus scream, I became convinced in quite a new way that the stridulatory apparatus of certain insects must not be thought of as a kind of musical instrument, but as an organ of speech, and that its utterances are as intimately a.s.sociated with simple forms of emotion, as are the notes of a bird,--the extraordinary difference being that the insect has its vocal chords _outside_. But the insect-world is altogether a world of goblins and fairies: creatures with organs of which we cannot discover the use, and senses of which we cannot imagine the nature;--creatures with myriads of eyes, or with eyes in their backs, or with eyes moving about at the ends of trunks and horns;--creatures with ears in their legs and bellies, or with brains in their waists! If some of them happen to have voices outside of their bodies instead of inside, the fact ought not to surprise anybody.

I have not yet succeeded in finding any j.a.panese verses alluding to the stridulatory apparatus of semi,--though I think it probable that such verses exist. Certainly the j.a.panese have been for centuries familiar with the peculiarities of their own singing insects. But I should not now presume to say that their poets are incorrect in speaking of the "voices" of crickets and of cicadae. The old Greek poets who actually describe insects as producing music with their wings and feet, nevertheless speak of the "voices," the "songs," and the "chirruping" of such creatures,--just as the j.a.panese poets do. For example, Meleager thus addresses the cricket:

"_O thou that art with shrill wings the self-formed imitation of the lyre, chirrup me something pleasant while beating your vocal wings with your feet!_ ..."

II

BEFORE speaking further of the poetical literature of semi, I must attempt a few remarks about the semi themselves. But the reader need not expect anything entomological. Excepting, perhaps, the b.u.t.terflies, the insects of j.a.pan are still little known to men of science; and all that I can say about semi has been learned from inquiry, from personal observation, and from old j.a.panese books of an interesting but totally unscientific kind. Not only do the authors contradict each other as to the names and characteristics of the best-known semi; they attach the word semi to names of insects which are not cicadae.

The following enumeration of semi is certainly incomplete; but I believe that it includes the better-known varieties and the best melodists. I must ask the reader, however, to bear in mind that the time of the appearance of certain semi differs in different parts of j.a.pan; that the same kind of semi may be called by different names in different provinces; and that these notes have been written in Tokyo.

I.--HARU-ZeMI.

VARIOUS small semi appear in the spring. But the first of the big semi to make itself heard is the _haru-zemi_ ("spring-semi"), also called _uma-zemi_ ("horse-semi"), _k.u.ma-zemi_ ("bear-semi"), and other names.

It makes a shrill wheezing sound,--_ji-i-i-i-i-iiiiiiii_,--beginning low, and gradually rising to a pitch of painful intensity. No other cicada is so noisy as the _haru-zemi;_ but the life of the creature appears to end with the season. Probably this is the semi referred to in an old j.a.panese poem:--

Hatsu-semi ya!

"Kore wa atsui" to Iu hi yori.

--TAIMU.

The day after the first day on which we exclaim, "Oh, how hot it is!" the first semi begins to cry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II.

"_Shinne-Shinne_,"

Also called _Yama-Zemi_, and _k.u.ma-Zemi_.]

II.--"SHINNe-SHINNe."

THE _shinne-shinne_--also called _yama-zemi_, or "mountain-semi"; _k.u.ma-zemi_, or "bear-semi"; and _o-semi_, or "great semi"--begins to sing as early as May. It is a very large insect. The upper part of the body is almost black, and the belly a silvery-white; the head has curious red markings. The name _shinne-shinne_ is derived from the note of the creature, which resembles a quick continual repet.i.tion of the syllables _shinne_. About Kyoto this semi is common: it is rarely heard in Tokyo.