ECSTASY (1913)
The shamisen is hateful,
The snakeskin glowing blue, sweetly,
It is so sad I am silent,
I am a sleeping emerald.
Faintly, faintly the ring round the moon
Opens within my heart.
Plucking the beautiful strings, “Death,” the white of my hand,
Silently, night deepens.
DANCE (DANSU, 1915)
Storm
Storm
Let there be light on the weeping willow
Bud of
A baby’s navel
Mercury hysteria
Spring comes
The sole of a foot
Softens the storm
Does the samovar of love
Sadden the oolong tea?
The storm is
Kicked to heaven
MANDALA (MANDARA, 1915)
The nut
Ripens on the tree.
All day
Stalked by a snake.
The nut
Glitters.
The tree of life
How sad.
TAKAMURA KŌTARŌ
Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956) was born in Tokyo and was educated at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied sculpture. In 1907 and 1908, he traveled overseas to the United States and Europe and in 1914 published his first book of poetry, which brought him immediate praise. Although Takamura wrote a number of books of poetry extolling Western art and literature, his writing gradually developed a nationalistic bent, which appeared most prominently in the poetry he published during World War II. After the war, however, he underwent a literary repentance.
BEAR FUR (KUMA NO KEGAWA, 1911)
How good the fur of a bear feels!
Touching the skin
Smooth, nice and soft
Bury your cheeks in the long hair!
Throw your body into the black hair!
A strange pleasure
Should rush through your blood vessels
Try to make women rising from their bath
Lie down in bear fur!
Beautiful women will
Glow with even more life
How good the fur of a bear feels!
Touching the skin
Smooth, nice and soft
A STEAK PLATTER (BIFUTEKI NO SARA, 1911)
How lovely is a steak platter!
A thick eye-fillet covered in heavy gravy
The fragrance of potatoes as direct as a savage
The lively polka of a small round radish placed in between!
Cutting it smoothly with a sharp knife, digging in a silver fork
Raw blood spitting pale pink
Deep within my heart someone starts jumping with joy
The waitress’s ring glints in the gaslight
Bordeaux stains the white napkin
The pressure of the night, filling the air of the restaurant, somewhere the sneer of an onion
The warmth of the blood we drink at a headhunter’s festival
Beating the plate
The pleasure of slowly chewing hateful human flesh!
The harmony of white and red in
Strauss’s oppressive climax
Behold! Behold! John the Baptist’s black blood spilling onto the plate
The silver fork glitters
Your eyelashes glitter
After all, we are enemies and will end up in tears
How lovely is a steak platter
With knife and fork lined up beside
KINOSHITA MOKUTARŌ
Kinoshita Mokutarō (1885–1945) was born into a shopkeeper’s family in Izu. In 1911 he graduated from the Tokyo University Medical School, and in 1907 he started publishing poetry and plays in earnest. At first, he was associated with the decadent Pan Society. But in 1919 he abandoned literature to concentrate on his medical career, eventually becoming a professor at the Tokyo University Medical School.
NAGASAKI STYLE (NAGASAKI BURI, 1907)
The flower handkerchief from the West that I left in my sleeve,
The dyed arabesque design
Whose fragrance is this? You call it “scented gillyflower.”
Aloes, saffron, Arisema serratum,
Harbor gossip in Hirado and Dejima,
The flowery words of a minx.
Come and suck at the red berries!
Your mouth will become inflamed and you will spit blood.
Sandalwood, Arisema serratum, Mercury
I call on Jesu in Paradiso.
GOLD LEAF BRANDY (KINPUNSHU, 1910)
Eau-de-vie de Dantzick.
Gold leaf floating in brandy
Oh, May, May, liqueur glasses.
Stained glass in my bar,
Purple rain falling on the streets.
Girl, bar girl,
You already in your serge kimono?
Your pale indigo stripes?
White peony flowers,
Don’t touch, pollen will scatter everywhere, the scent will scatter everywhere.
Oh, May, May, your voice is
The sweet sounds of a flute under the paulownia flowers,
The softness of a young black cat’s fur,
Melting my heart, Japanese shamisen
Eau-de-vie de Dantzick.
It’s May, it’s May—
YOSANO AKIKO
After graduating from high school, Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) began writing poetry for a local poetry circle. Then when Yosano Tekkan launched a poetry monthly, Myōjō (Bright Star), Akiko became one of its first contributors. Later the two poets married. Even though much of Akiko’s reputation rests on her poems in traditional forms, those in the modern style are of exceptional quality. The following poem is often read as antiwar, but Akiko’s motivation for writing it was personal, not political. When reading it, notice the radical difference between the reader’s interpretation and the poet’s intent. The poem is dedicated to Akiko’s younger brother Sōichi, who was in the army, which at that time was attacking Port Arthur. The following translations and this introduction are by Janine Beichman.
BELOVED, YOU MUST NOT DIE (KIMI SINITAMŌ NAKARE, 1905)
Ah, my brother, I weep for you.
Beloved, you must not die.
You, the last born,
and so most cherished—
did our parents teach you to grasp a sword,
to kill another man?
Did they bring you up to twenty-four
to murder, and then die?
You, proud master of an old store
in the merchant city of Sakai,
heir to your father’s name—
beloved, you must not die.
What is it to you whether
the walls of Port Arthur tumble or they stand?
Why should you care? Such things are not in
the laws of a merchant’s family.
Beloved, you must not die.
How could our great emperor,
whose wondrous heart is so deep,
not do battle himself
but still ask others to spill their blood,
to die like beasts,
and think those deaths a glory?
Ah, my brother, you must not
die in war.
Father dead last fall,
Mother in her grief had to face
the pain of your being drafted,
of being left alone to watch our home.
In this great and peaceful reign
her white hairs have increased.
Your new wife, young and lovely, lies
and weeps behind the shop curtains.
Have you forgotten her? Do you think of her?
Left alone after being wed less than ten months.
Think of her maiden heart!
Besides you, who, ah who, in all the world
can she rely on?
Beloved, you must not die!
IN THE FIRST PERSON (ICHINISHŌ, 1911)
If only I cou
ld write in the first person
I, a woman alone, off in a corner
If only I could write in the first person
Like this: I, I
A CERTAIN COUNTRY (ARU KUNI, 1911)
A country that rejoices at formal outward propriety
but indulges in imprudent caprice, a country
without the patience of the Chinese
but with a shallow egocentricity,
a country without America’s wealth
but that imitates it anyway,
a country where mistrust and trembling terror mingle,
a country where the men, all hunched over, become fatalists,
a country of good fortune and peace:
May it live a hundred
million years!
FROM PARIS ON A POSTCARD (PARII YORI HAGAKI NO UE NI, 1915)
On my third day in Paris
I pinned a big poppy, bright red,
to my hat.
All the while saying, “What will become
of me, doing such things. . . .”
THE HEART OF A THIRTYISH WOMAN (SANJŪ ONNA NO KOKORO, 1915)
The heart of a thirtyish woman
is a shadowless, smokeless,
soundless ball of fire, a crimson sun
set against the evening sky,
unmoving
burning burning burning.
POETRY IN TRADITIONAL FORMS
KANSHI
Well-educated Japanese in the Tokugawa period (1600–1867), continuing until the end of the nineteenth century, learned to read and write in classical Chinese, in somewhat the same manner as American and European students during the same period learned Greek and Latin as a part of their education.1 Their ability to write poetry in Chinese gave Japanese poets more possibilities for expression than did the thirty-one-syllable Japanese waka or tanka (short poem) and the seventeen-syllable haiku. Indeed, composing poetry in Chinese was a popular pastime in the early modern period, and many writers—most of whom had received a classical education—continued to write poetry in that language.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, most Japanese students had turned away from the Chinese classics to study instead French, German, and English. Consequently, although the composition of Chinese poems (kanshi) virtually stopped in the twentieth century, some striking examples of such poems were written in the Meiji period (1868–1912). The last great writer of kanshi was the novelist Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) (some of his other works can be found in this anthology). Particularly in those poems written later in his life, Sōseki used the medium of Chinese verse to express some of his most intimate thoughts and reflections, which never found such direct reflection in his prose works. The following are three of his (untitled) poems in classical Chinese, translated by Burton Watson.
Not a Christian, not a Buddhist, not a Confucian either,
in a blind lane peddling my writings, I managed to amuse myself.
What fragrance did I gather, passing through the gardens of art?
How many greens have I wandered, there on poetry fields?
In the ashes of the burned book the book lives, I know;
in Dharma-less worlds the Dharma may spring to life again.
Beat the gods till they’re dead, and when no shadow remains,
clear, sharp in the formless void, wise and foolish will appear.
[October 6, 1916]
Once I was a poor man’s son,
envying the gates of the rich and lordly;
one morning they filled my empty belly—
I died on the spot to requite their kindness.
Once I lived in the house to the east;
I went to beg food from my western neighbor;
went, came home, and what did I see?
My old hut in the pouring rain.
Once I was the child of a peaceful age,
contented, forgetful of parting and strife;
suddenly the fires of war blazed up—
I died, and found my hunger for the first time healed.
[from a set of three poems, October 22, 1916]
The true path is shadowy and still, far away and hard to find;
embracing none but empty thoughts, let me walk through past and present.
Emerald waters, emerald hills—what do they know of ego?
Sheltering heaven, sheltering earth, there is only mindlessness.
Uncertain colors of evening: a moon parting from the grass;
restless voice of autumn: wind that inhabits the forest.
Eyes, ears both forgotten, my body too is lost;
alone in the void I sing a song of white clouds.
[November 20, 1916]
TANKA AND HAIKU
Tanka (short poems, also known traditionally as waka, thirty-one-syllable poems) have been written throughout the history of Japanese literature, and haiku (seventeen-syllable poems) first assumed lasting prominence with the writings of the poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). Despite the introduction of new poetic forms from the West in the modern period, these traditional forms continued to attract gifted writers, as they still do. By the end of the Tokugawa period, these forms had become increasingly encrusted with traditions and rules for their composition. Many modern poets, however, found ways to break out of such traditional structures, composing poems that retained the general aims and possibilities inherent in these forms but now were expressed with a new and vital freshness.
ISHIKAWA TAKUBOKU
The tanka by Ishikawa Takuboku (1885–1912) are among the most personal statements in Meiji literature, constituting a kind of poetic diary capturing his moods, obsessions, and hopes. The son of a Zen priest, Takuboku eventually went to Tokyo to try to earn money to support his family. Constantly short of money, he became interested in socialism toward the end of his life, dying of tuberculosis while still a young man. Some examples of his poetry composed in the modem international style can be found in the preceding section.
MASAOKA SHIKI
Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) became famous as a writer both of tanka and haiku. He and Natsume Sōseki shared an interest in the classics, and Shiki wrote some poetry in Chinese as well. He began his career as a writer for a Tokyo newspaper. When he was sent as a correspondent to China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, he fell ill and eventually died of tuberculosis after a long and difficult illness. Shiki’s interest in reforming tanka helped change the course of modern Japanese poetry.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 47
