Songs From Hearts Sincere: Inspirational Poetry of Emperor Meiji

by Brian Wilkes and Frank Alanson Lombard

While creating curriculum for university degree programs in Reiki, I studied the Gyosei, or administrative poetry of Emperor Meiji archived by the Meiji Shrine at Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. More of a religious leader than modern political chief of government, in the late 19th century the emperor expressed his wishes through poetic statements more often than through direct commands. In this way, he sought to bring the audience into harmony with his own mindset, and thereby let it arise in minds of the subjects what might be expected of them.The first generation of the discipline we know as Reiki was deeply influenced by the Meiji emperor's intention, and recitation of the imperial poetry was routinely practiced by Reiki practitioners in Japan as a way for an already homogenous culture to become even more single-minded. Emperor Meiji created over 100,000 of these poems, and the Empress Shoken about 30,000. I sought the aid of two Japanese language instructors, Shigeki Yamada and Cesar D. L?pez, to re-create the original poetry as it was written, in a combination of kanji ideograms and hiragana phonetics, taking advantage of modern digital technology to provide you the reader with clear, legible materials. While Professor Lombard's remarkable translation maintained the meter, in a few cases his late-Edwardian style seems contrived to the modern reader. These have been updated to allow for smoother reading. What you see before you is the fruit of that collaboration.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1530302986
• ISBN13: 9781530302987
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"