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