Exotics and Retrospectives — Part 23

Although by no means a rare insect, the matsumushi is much esteemed for the peculiar clearness and sweetness of its notes--(onomatopoetically rendered in Japanese by the syllables _chin-chirorīn, chin-chirorīn_),-- little silvery shrillings which I can best describe as resembling the sound of an electric bell heard from a distance. The matsumushi haunts pine-woods and cryptomeria-groves, and makes its music at night. It is a very small insect, with a dark-brown back, and a yellowish belly.

Perhaps the oldest extant verses upon the matsumushi are those contained in the _Kokinshū_,--a famous anthology compiled in the year 905 by the court-poet Tsurayuki and several of his noble friends. Here we first find that play on the name of the insect as pronounced, which was to be repeated in a thousand different keys by a multitude of poets through the literature of more than nine hundred years:--

Aki no no ni Michi mo madoinu; Matsumushi no Koe suru kata ni Yadoya karamashi.

“In the autumn-fields I lose my way;--perhaps I might ask for lodging in the direction of the cry of the waiting-insect;”--that is to say, “might sleep to-night in the grass where the insects are waiting for me.” There is in the same work a much prettier poem on the matsumushi by Tsurayuki.

With dusk begins to cry the male of the Waiting-insect;-- I, too, await my beloved, and, hearing, my longing grows.

The following poems on the same insect are less ancient but not less interesting:--

Forever past and gone, the hour of the promised advent!-- Truly the Waiter’s voice is a voice of sadness now!

Parting is sorrowful always,--even the parting with autumn! O plaintive matsumushi, add not thou to my pain!

Always more clear and shrill, as the hush of the night grows deeper, The Waiting-insect’s voice;--and I that wait in the garden, Feel enter into my heart the voice and the moon together.

The name signifies “bell-insect;” but the bell of which the sound is thus referred to is a very small bell, or a bunch of little bells such as a Shinto priestess uses in the sacred dances. The _suzumushi_ is a great favorite with insect-fanciers, and is bred in great numbers for the market. In the wild state it is found in many parts of Japan; and at night the noise made by multitudes of _suzumushi_ in certain lonesome places might easily be mistaken,--as it has been by myself more than once,--for the sound of rapids. The Japanese description of the insect as resembling “a watermelon seed”--the black kind--is excellent. It is very small, with a black back, and a white or yellowish belly. Its tintinnabulation--_ri-ï-ï-ï-in_, as the Japanese render the sound--might easily be mistaken for the tinkling of a _suzu_. Both the _matsumushi_ and the _suzumushi_ are mentioned in Japanese poems of the period of Engi (901-922).