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when the brother repented, he put forth the tide-ebbing jewel to save him. After he had thus been afflicted, the elder brother bowed his head and said, "From now on I shall be your guard day and night, and respectfully serve you."
    Hereupon the daughter of the God of the Sea came to Fire-fade and said, "I am with child, and the time for my delivery approaches. But I thought that the child of a heavenly deity should not be born in the sea plain, and I have come to you here." At the edge of the waves on the seashore she built a hall for her delivery, using cormorants' feathers for thatch. But before the thatch was completed, she could not restrain the urgency of her womb, and she entered the hall. When she was about to be delivered, she said to her husband, "Whenever a foreigner is about to give birth to a child, she takes the shape of her native land. I now will take my native shape. Pray look not upon me!" The Prince, thinking her words very strange, stealthily looked upon her at the moment of delivery, when she turned into a crocodile eight fathoms long, and crawled and writhed about. Terrified at the sight, he fled away.
    The Princess knew then that he had looked upon her, and she felt ashamed. Straightway leaving the child she had borne, she said, "I had wished always to come and go across the paths of the sea to you. But now I feel ashamed because you have seen me in my real shape." So she closed the boundary of the sea and went down again. But though she remained angry that he had wished to look upon her, she could not restrain her loving heart, and she entrusted to her younger sister, when she was nursing the child, a song for the Prince, which said: "Even though the string on which the red jewels are strung shines, my lord who is like white jewels is yet more beautiful."
    Her husband replied with a song which said: "My dear wife, whom I took to sleep with me on the island where light the wild duck, the birds of the offing, I shall not forget you till the end of my life."
    Prince Fire-fade dwelt in his palace of Takachiho for five hundred and eighty years, and his tomb is likewise on the west of Mount Takachiho.
    TRANSLATED BY B. H. CHAMBERLAIN (MODIFIED)

KAIFOS Ō

    The "Kaif Å« s ō ," or "Fond Recollections of Poetry," was the first anthology of poetry in Chinese written by Japanese. It was compiled in 751, and includes material written over a period of seventy-five years. The verses in the "Kaif Å« s ō " sometimes give the effect rather of copy-book exercises than of true poetry—which is only natural considering that they were among the earliest attempts by Japanese writers, including emperors, to compose in Chinese. Even when the subject of a poem is Japanese—such as a visit to the Yoshino River—the main effort of the writer appears to be directed toward including as many allusions to Chinese literature and history as possible. Nevertheless, some of the poems reach a high level of competence, as is indicated in the following selection.
    Approaching death
    [ Written when the Prince faced execution for attempted rebellion ]
The golden crow 1 lights on the western huts;
Evening drums beat out the shortness of life.
There are no inns on the road to the grave—
Whose is the house I go to tonight?
    Prince Ō tsu (662-687)
    The border official
Last year service in the eastern hills,
This, the marches of the western sea.
How often in the span of an official's life
Must he weary himself with these border wars?
    Fujiwara no Umakai (694-737)
    Watching fish in the water
By the southern woods I have built my hut;
I drop my hook from the north lake banks.
Sporting birds dive when I draw near;
Green duckweed sinks before my gliding boat.
The quivering reeds reveal the fish below;
By the length of my line I know the bottom's depth.
With vain sighs I dangle the tempting bait
And watch the spectacle of avaricious hearts.
    Ki no Suemochi (Early Eighth Century)
    Composed at a party for the