Post #2: Nanban Port

Stanza Analysis of:

Nanban Port by Unknown author (2016)

"Onward!, onto the Eastern Sea

to the land of the Rising Sun

where the mountains touch the sky

and their honour knows no bounds. 

 Fragmented is their land, for feudal clans dispute over ancestral lands.

 To fight is not foreign to these people as we are,

the ones who came in on ships bearing the word of God."  

Stanza Analysis:

  1. In the first stanza, the speaker tells his crew to sail towards Japan through the way of the East China Sea. A common nickname for Japan is the "land of the rising sun" and the "Eastern Sea" refers to the East China Sea where European explorers sailed through when they first landed on the island in the 16th century. The lines "where the mountains touch the sky and their honour knows no bounds" describe the landscape of the archipelago which is dotted with many mountains and the traditions of the warriors of old that are famous throughout world history."

2. In the last stanza, the speaker describes the political turmoil of Japan as they are landing. In accordance to history, this describes Japan in the mid 16th century in which the country was in a period known as "Sengoku Jidai" which literally translates to the "Age of Civil War", the same time that European explorers, such as the Portuguese, Dutch, and English landed. The line of "the ones who came in on ships bearing the word of God" describes what the explorers intended to do after they had a lay of the land. The Europeans set up Christian missionaries around the land in an effort to convert the populace. The whole stanza along with the whole poem is an allusion to this point of history.

Sources: History of Japan during the Sengoku Period, http://www.samurai-archives.com/
Japan: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Regions_and_Prefectures_of_Japan_2.svg/500px-Regions_and_Prefectures_of_Japan_2.svg.png

 If there are any poems that you would like for me to do a stanza analysis on, just send an email to me at chrisgomez516@gmail.com