The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

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The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 102

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  as a result of the Security Treaty.

  I am wondering why the government

  elected by kind people of America

  for the kind people of America, of the kind people of America

  which issues 25-cent stamps of Abraham Lincoln

  has been helping authoritarian governments

  in Korea and Turkey and in Japan

  the government of Kishi Brothers & Company

  for Kishi Brothers & Company, by Kishi Brothers & Company.

  Whenever Kishi went to America and said

  Japan and America were good friends

  some attempts were made by the Japanese government

  to return to the old educational system

  to return to the old national religion

  to return to the old family system

  to return to the old police state

  to return to the old militarism

  the explosion of which was Pearl Harbor

  done by Tōjō and Kishi.

  TURN BACK THE CLOCK (1961)

  Turn Back the Clock has come to you through the worldwide

  facilities of the United States Armed Forces Radio and

  Television Service.

  Well, Hayato, let’s

  turn back the clock

  to the good old days

  when there was no memory of Pearl Harbor

  when there was no memory of Hiroshima

  when Japan had the strongest army and navy in

  the world

  when the Japanese believed in spirits and ghosts

  and the Emperor as God

  when the young men and women got married as assigned by their parents and grandparents when the wife carrying a baby on her back and

  packages in her hands

  walked after the husband.

  Turn back the clock

  says the minister of education

  to the good old days of the Ministry of Education

  when the bureaucrats controlled every corner of

  every classroom

  when the purpose of education was

  to fit the boys for soldiers

  and prepare the girls not to cry

  for their husbands killed in battlefields

  crying banzai for the emperor.

  OK, let’s

  turn back the clock

  to the good old days of Imperial Japan

  and throw away every reform

  imposed on Japan during the Occupation

  and make the people feel once again

  the superiority of Japan all over the world

  and let them have the pride of being servants of

  the emperor

  and the pride of being servants to the U.S.

  and let us produce young patriots

  glad to die

  and glad to kill

  another Asanuma

  crying banzai for the emperor

  and banzai for free nations of the West.

  Turn back the clock

  to the good old days

  when Japan and Germany and Italy formed

  an anti-Communism league

  and was the threat to the peace of the world.

  Those things were decided

  when Hayato Ikeda and Assistant Secretary of State Robertson met

  in October 1953.

  SHIRAISHI KAZUKO

  Born in Vancouver, Shiraishi Kazuko (b. 1931) was influenced by the African American jazz musicians who frequently visited postwar Japan. She published her first book of poetry when she was twenty-one. Her Let Those Who Emerge (Arawareru monotachi o shite, 1996) won both the Yomiuri Literary Prize and the Takami Jun Prize. Shiraishi is one of the few prominent poets who reads poems to the accompaniment of jazz.

  THE PHALLUS (DANKON, 1965)

  For Sumiko’s birthday

  God is even if He is not.

  Also He is humorous enough

  to resemble a certain kind of human.

  This time

  with a gigantic phallus over

  the horizon of my dream

  He came on a picnic.

  Incidentally

  I regret

  I gave nothing to Sumiko on her birthday.

  I’d at least like to send

  the seeds of the phallus God brought

  into that thin tiny lovely voice of

  Sumiko on the line’s other side.

  Forgive me Sumiko

  for the phallus has grown larger day by day

  until now growing in the middle of cosmos

  it wouldn’t move like a bus that has broken down.

  And so

  when you want to see

  a star-sprinkled beautiful night sky or

  some other man

  rushing down the highway with a hot woman

  you really must

  lean out of the bus window

  to take a good peek.

  The phallus

  begins to stir and if it’s near the cosmos

  it’s good to look at. At such a time

  Sumiko

  starry sky’s lighting loneliness

  midday’s funny cold

  affect your innards entirely

  and as they say what’s visible you see and no one

  can help becoming insane.

  The phallus has neither name nor personality

  nor a date so that

  it’s only when someone passes by

  carrying it like a festival shrine

  that from the racket sometimes

  you know somehow where it lives.

  In that hubbub

  the primeval riots and voids of

  oaths and curses of the seeds not yet controlled by God

  reach your ear on occasion.

  The so-called God is prone to be absent.

  Instead He leaves only debt and phallus behind

  to go off somewhere or so it seems.

  Now

  the phallus left behind by God

  walks toward you.

  It is young and gay

  and so full of such artless confidence

  it somehow resembles the shadow of an astute smile.

  The phallus may seem to grow in countless numbers

  and in countless numbers walk toward you

  but in fact it’s singular and walks alone toward you.

  From whatever horizon you see it

  it’s uniformly devoid of face and word—

  that’s the kind of thing Sumiko

  I’d like to give you on your birthday.

  I would cover your existence wholly with it and then

  to you your own self would become invisible

  and at times

  you would become the phallus the will itself

  and wander endlessly

  until I might hold you in my nebulous embrace.

  TAKAMURA KŌTARŌ

  Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956) had a long career as a poet, and a number of his bestknown and admired works are included in chapters 2, 3, and 4. After the war, Takamura often looked back at his earlier prowar attitudes and regretted his early enthusiasm for the Pacific War.

  END OF THE WAR (SHŪSEN, 1947)

  With my studio completely, cleanly, burned up,

  I came to Hanamaki, Ōshū.

  There, I heard that broadcast.

  Sitting upright, I was trembling.

  Japan was finally stripped bare,

  the people’s heart fell, down to the bottom.

  Saved from starvation by the Occupation forces,

  they were barely exempt from extinction.

  Then, the emperor stepped forward

  and explained that he was not a living god.

  As days passed,

  the beam was taken out of my eyes,

  and before I knew it, the sixty years’ burden was gone.

  Grandfather, father, and mother

  returned again to their seats in distant Nirvana,

  and I heaved a deep sigh
.

  After a mysterious deliverance

  there’s only love as a human being.

  The celadon of a clear sky after rain

  is fragrant in my capacious heart

  and now, serene with nothing left,

  I enjoy fully the beauty of the desolate.

  MY POETRY (ORE NO SHI, 1949)

  My poetry doesn’t belong to Western poesy.

  The two circles are tangent

  but in the end never perfectly merge.

  I passionately love the world of Western poesy,

  but can’t deny that my poetry stands on different sources.

  The Athenian sky and the underground fountain of Christianity

  gave birth to the language and thought patterns of Western poesy.

  It is endlessly beautiful and strong and penetrates my insides,

  but its physiology of powdered food, dairy products, and entrecôte

  keeps at arm’s length the necessities of my Japanese language.

  My poetry comes out of my organs and intestines.

  Born at the tip of the Far East, raised on grain food,

  and nurtured on yeast, soybeans, and fish,

  this soul has a faint fragrance of the remote Gandhara scented in it,

  but has been enlightened more by the yellow dust culture of the vast continent,

  while bathing, as it has, in the purling stream of Japanese classics,

  and now, abruptly, marvels at atomic power.

  My poetry doesn’t exist outside my being,

  and my being is no more than a sculptor in the Far East.

  To me, the universe is the source of all structures,

  poetry their contrepoint.

  Western poesy is my dear neighbor,

  but my poetry moves in a different orbit.

  TANIKAWA SHUNTARŌ

  Tanikawa Shuntarō’s (b. 1931) first book of poetry, Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (Nijū-oku kōnen no kodoku), was published in 1952. Since then, he has remained one of Japan’s most popular and prolific poets, and his poems also are among those most often translated into English. Tanikawa’s influence and popularity are enhanced by his ability to engage poetry fans in public sessions.

  GROWTH (SEICH Ō, 1952)

  Three years old:

  I had no past.

  Five years old:

  My past went as far as yesterday.

  Seven years old:

  My past went as far as topknots.

  Eleven years old:

  My past went as far as dinosaurs.

  Fourteen years old:

  My past was as textbooks said it was.

  Sixteen years old:

  I stared at the infinity of my past frightened.

  Eighteen years old:

  I did not know what time was.

  DRIZZLE (KIRISAME, 1952)

  The Negro singer, for an encore,

  sang a Negro spiritual.

  (I’m concerned that the MC spoke coldly)

  The Negro composer, in the stage light,

  introduced himself.

  (I’m worried to death about the amount of applause)

  Los Angeles, California, has beautiful starry summer nights,

  I’m told, but tonight, in Tokyo, a rain like fine mist continues

  to fall quietly.

  TOMIOKA TAEKO

  In 1957, while Tomioka Taeko (b. 1935) was a college student, her first book of poetry, Courtesy in Return (Henrei), was published. Although she attracted admirers with her sophisticated chattiness, she stopped writing poetry and moved into other genres about the time a collection of her complete poems appeared, in 1973. Since then, Tomioka has written short stories, novels, and plays and, in the 1980s, became established as an important feminist critic.

  BETWEEN—(1957)

  There are two sorrows to be proud of

  After slamming the door of the room behind me

  After slamming the door

  Of the entrance of the house behind me

  And out on the street visibility zero because of the rain of the rainy season

  When the day begins

  What will I do

  What am I going to do

  To neither

  Am I friend or enemy

  Who can I ask

  This concrete question

  I hate war

  And am no pacifist

  The effort just to keep my eyes open

  The sorrow that I can make only that effort

  There are two sorrows to be proud of

  I am with you

  I don’t understand you

  Therefore I understand that you are

  Therefore I understand that I am

  The sorrow that I do not understand you

  The sorrow that you are what you are

  STILL LIFE (SEIBUTSU, 1957)

  Your story is finished.

  By the way, today,

  what did you have for a snack?

  Yesterday your mother said,

  I wish I was dead.

  You took her hand,

  went out, walked around,

  viewed a river the color of sand,

  viewed a landscape with a river in it.

  They call the willow the tree of tears in France,

  said Bonnard’s woman once.

  Yesterday you said,

  Mom, when did you give birth to me?

  Your mother said,

  I never gave birth to any living thing.

  YOSHIOKA MINORU

  In 1955 Yoshioka Minoru (1919–1990) published Still Life (Seibutsu), which marked another departure for Japan’s postwar poetry. This was the advent of a body of poetry that, to use the words with which Yoshioka described the performances of Hijikata Tatsumi, the founder of the avant-garde dance form of Butoh, may be characterized as “grotesque and elegant, obscene and noble, comic and solemn.”

  STILL LIFE (SEIBUTSU , 1955)

  Within the hard surface of night’s bowl

  Intensifying their bright colors

  The autumn fruits

  Apples, pears, grapes, and so forth

  Each as they pile

  Upon another

  Goes close to sleep

  To one theme

  To spacious music

 

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