The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)
Page 101
We listened to his loud voice, our eardrums shaking, and understood nothing. It was like listening to a foreigner’s gibberish. He continued: “Cows ending up as guinea pigs—that’s very funny!” He paused, waiting for his own laughter to subside. “Anyway, you’ve got to be careful. Rabbits are edible, sure, but try eating a guinea pig. Mind you, these angoras aren’t that great to eat either.”
At that moment the captive rabbit, its taut gray skin showing through the fur, suddenly straightened its limbs out and bit the meat buyer’s arm. I felt blood rushing to my head. For some reason all that my eyes saw then were the rabbit and the hand that held it by its back. “Bite him again!” I said to myself. “Son of a bitch!” the man cried out, and swung the rabbit at the pillar on the veranda. Its head made a sickening crunching sound as it hit the wood. But it was not dead as it lay at the foot of the pillar. Its red eyes, wide open but probably unseeing, looked at us. The meat buyer picked it up and threw it into the basket on his bicycle. He then grabbed the others by the ears, one by one, and stuffed them all in. The lid was closed and secured by a cord. Through the mesh the rabbits’ white fur appeared, moving, it seemed, with a life of its own. The meat buyer pulled some dirty bills out of his wallet. He turned toward my father, then looked away quickly—did he sense some rabbitlike qualities there?—and handed the bills to Mother.
The man’s bicycle was now near the gate, beyond the vegetable garden where mysteriously only those vines that Father planted for rabbit fodder flourished. We stood by the veranda and watched it go, not saying a word to one another.
POETRY IN THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE
As some of the poems included here indicate, the careers of many prominent poets spanned a variety of periods and influences. Many of the younger poets began their mature work in the two decades after the end of World War II in 1945. Indeed, the number of highly respected poets writing during this time is so great that Hiroaki Sato, the editor of this section of the anthology, was able to include only a few representative works of those who remain most esteemed by the Japanese reading public. Except where noted, the introductions and translations are by Hiroaki Sato.
AYUKAWA NOBUO
Drafted into the military in 1942, Ayukawa Nobuo (1920–1986) returned, wounded, from Sumatra in 1944. After the war, he became a member of the Arechi (Wasteland) Group.
IN SAIGON(SAIGON NITE, 1953)
There was no one on the pier
to welcome our ship.
The French town I’d dreamed of
floated on a nameless sea of an Oriental colony
and the body of a young army civilian
who killed himself with a razor blade
was carried out of a hatch, wrapped in white canvas, undulating.
That was our Saigon.
The sufferings of France
were the sufferings of its people
but were the agonies of us soldiers
the agonies of our motherland?
Over a huge ship carrying a Tricolor
was an endlessly clear blue sky
of a defeated nation.
When many friends die
and many more friends keep dying
how beneath the skin of the living
black maggots begin crawling—
the sick soldiers talked voiceless
with the newly dead.
In the bright breeze,
the razor blade that liberated the young soul
set against our thin throats,
the boat with the stretcher
slowly receded into the distance, plowing the green waves.
THE END OF THE NIGHT
(YORU NO O WARI, 1953)
1
You frighten me, you,
like the night beach,
hold close the flow of my blood tide,
you frighten me, you
hook me onto a sharp stake of love,
make my body writhe like waterweed,
and tear it into shreds.
You frighten me, you
mouth vile words of prayer
and keep fondling my breasts, a virgin dead by water.
I put my averted face
on the water of sorrow,
gazing into each of the distant stars, near stars,
ah, that’s all.
You are the gentle one, you
cannot keep in your arms
a flowing river, forever.
No matter how you caress my dark hair,
my senses drop away
from water’s edge where we meet, flesh to flesh,
and your fingers cannot get hold of anything.
2
The bars shutting us in
are made neither of iron nor of wood
but of raw muscles;
I cannot escape these mobile bars,
however I try.
Your hot blood vessels
entwine my thin neck
and stifle the cry of my formless soul.
I don’t know why I’ve fallen this far,
I don’t know,
To us living in this windowless room
as if a day were a year,
there is neither the sun that rises nor the sun that sets,
where on earth
is the horizon for us?
Ah, in my brain
there’s only a table turning round and round,
there are only small bones of beastly meat
and a grimy napkin to wipe plates with,
there is neither love nor pity.
As if to look for an invisible exit,
once again
I grope over the wall
and push open your breasts.
3
A hand of the air pulls at the curtain
of the bedroom no one knows,
The face of mist looks in from the ceiling
on the bedroom no one knows.
What a cold hand you have,
your five fingers are more savage than any weapon,
have poison far more fierce than any snake,
what do you plan to do by killing me?
Who is it? playing a concertina of bones
with cold hands of air.
What a pale face you have,
feigning you’ve given up on everything
you haven’t given up on anything, have you,
what do you plan to do if I die?
Who’s that? a pale face of mist,
with tears of blood.
WARTIME BUDDY (SEN’YŪ, 1963)
My God . . . it sure has been a long time.
I thought that it was all forgotten now. . . .
Twenty years, huh?
You look at me as though you are seeing back that far.
Well, put her there.
So you’re still kicking around then . . .
And what a cold hand.
I suppose you can remember then?
—The bloody straits of Johore—
—The scorched hills of Singapore—.
And you can still hear then, I suppose? The echoes of destruction on destruction,
The song the cannon roars
Down from the naval station
At some hour of death?
You crick your neck pretending not to understand,
—Like all those little foxes who hide
Between the books, behind the keyholes.
You and I can meet now only in the past.
Is there still some secret there?
Line up under orders right away.
The black forest of bayonets all ranged in place;
Face the enemy: silently attack.
—One evening over, and you’re
Dead.
Where did all that firmness go?
How did it die away,
That incarnation of innocence itself
—That you could follow clear to the horizon:
Glory for our country! Love for our fellow countrymen!
This morning too, wh
en you brushed your teeth
In front of the faucet
There was red blood
Mixed in that toothpaste green
And you spat it out.
You respectfully tied your little necktie
And took your little body, warm still
From the end of sleep.
And had yourself packed
Into the streetcar,
Going reluctantly to work:
To get
Just a little something
You have to pull in
Just a little money
Today too
Day after tomorrow, too.
If there’s anything to answer, then answer.
You, with the guts of a trembling little bride.
You, my wartime buddy.
No matter how much we all lose
How little have you gained.
Huh?
No matter what the liberation
Gained from any enemy
What reparations did you pay?
Eyes, or ears, or hands and feet
Of the unlucky ones who sacrificed:
What did you do for them?
Yeah, my wartime buddy,
Why don’t you speak up, just a little?
If you look straight this way, at me,
What is it
That you cannot see?
Everything will be just fine for the shrewd ones
Has really come to mean
Safety at any price and
A backing into indolence
Does everything you get depend upon
Some endless ability for compromise?
Fighting in the sordid realms of profit, loss,
All of you who mimic life so well
Cry in a single voice that
It’s a terrible time.
With some dreary bar girl to talk to,
Water turns to wine,
And you grumble that
Desire will not grow more reckless.
Hiding in the trunk of a great tree.
Your sentimental brotherhood
With fawning heads all stuck together
Sleep
And propagate
(within the proper bounds)
And fill your stomachs
And happy dream of heaven
(within the proper limits).
Don’t you count up the storms that come?
Fate will size you up in a single flash of light:
It’s been a long time coming,
This end of the world.
See you around,
Friend.
This is the first time,
Really,
For us to part
And I want
No idle kiss
Ta-ta.
Translated by J. Thomas Rimer
ISHIGAKI RIN
Ishigaki Rin (1920–2004) was born in Akasaka, in downtown Tokyo. From 1934 to 1975, she worked as a bank clerk and so became known as the “bank clerk poet.” Her first book of poetry, In Front of Me the Pot, the Pan, and the Burning Flame (Watakushi no mae ni aru nabe to okama to moeru hi to) was published in 1959, and the second of her four collections, Nameplates Etc. (Hyōsatsu nado), was published in 1968. The translations are by Janine Beichman.
ROOF (YANE, 1959)
Japanese houses have low roofs
The poorer the family the lower the roof
The roof’s lowness
presses me down
Where does the heaviness come from?
I take a few steps back to look:
it’s not the blue of the sky
that’s above the house
it’s a thickness the color of blood
something that keeps me from going forward
something that locks me in the narrowness of this dwelling
and consumes my power
My invalid father lives on top of the roof
my stepmother lives up there with him
my siblings live up there too
When the wind blows I hear the crackling of
that tin roof
so flimsy it might fly away
the barely forty square yards of it
and riding on top I see
a daikon radish
and a bag of rice
and the bed’s warmth too
Carry me! says this roof
under whose weight
I, a woman, feel my spring darken
Far off in the distance the sun goes down
SHIJIMI CLAMS (SHIJIMI, 1968)
woke up in the dead of night—
in a corner of the kitchen
the little clams I’d bought that evening
were alive, mouths open—
“At dawn
I’ll gobble you up
each and every one”
let out a cackle
like an evil old witch
after that couldn’t help it had to
sleep all night with mouth half-open
LIFE (KURASHI, 1968)
To live we must eat—
rice
veggies
meat
air
light
water
our parents
sisters and brothers
teachers
money and hearts too
without all that eating I’d never have lived this long—
I pat my full stomach
wipe my lips
the kitchen’s littered
with carrot tops
chicken bones
Daddy’s intestines
At forty’s twilight
for the first time my eyes overflow with a wild beast’s tears
KATAGIRI YUZURU
While he was a young man, Katagiri Yuzuru (b. 1931) studied at San Francisco State College in 1959/1960. The poetry that he wrote when he returned home to the volatile political situation in Japan was much more political than his later work. The following poems reveal the Japanese people’s uneasiness over the renewal of the United States–Japan Security Treaty and, later, the Vietnam War. The poems were written in English.
CHRISTMAS, 1960, JAPAN (1961)
Oh, unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given who has no thumbs
conceived by the lightning at Hiroshima
when his mother had all her hair off
Behold the ape of god
denied by
those American nuclear specialists at the A, B, C.
One difference between apes and men
is the use of the thumbs.
WHY SECURITY TREATY? (1961)
I live near an air base
where the noise of jet planes shakes
windowpanes of classrooms
and the children’s scores in standard tests
are lower than in other school districts
and scared cows and hens give no milk and no
eggs but there is no escape
Japan is a small country
with poor natural resources
and we don’t see why
Japan is in danger of being conquered
by communist countries.
I am an Americanized Japanese
who hears Armed Forces Radio Service
which says all men and women are created equal
as the Fourth of July is coming near
and we do not see the reason
why we must be the crew of an aircraft carrier
of another country which flies U2s
and I live near an airbase
that might be another Hiroshima
and Japan is a small country
where mountains are tilled to the tops
which seem beautiful to American eyes
who want to keep Japan as a museum
of old strange cultures
of polite people.
I like American people
they are kind and they gave us chocolate
I like American ways of living<
br />
they are so comfortable
I like American education in which
boys and girls work and play together and are happy
I wanted Japan to be a state of the United States
of America
just after the war
Now I am glad that Japan is not a state of the
United States of America
where all young men are taken to be soldiers
and many were killed in Korea without knowing
why
where citizens are deceived into believing
their safety in a nuclear air raid if they hide
quickly.
I am a taxpayer who does not want
to keep such a big army navy air force
as a result of the Security Treaty
in this age of nuclear weapons
I am a teacher of English
who teaches Gettysburg Address
to the third-year students of a high school who are
scared by the fear of being taken as soldiers
and sent to another country to defend another country
as Japan is involved automatically in a possible limited war