by Chika Sagawa
October 23rd
Every morning I wake up in a strangely drowsy state, the effects of the painkillers not completely worn off. I’m happy to have a decent morning, like I’ve been having recently. Today I have an appetite, and feel like eating anything. I receive the X-ray treatment. For thirty minutes. By dinner time I feel sick and can’t eat. I wonder if it was because of the X-ray. After dinner, I lay sleeping with a wet towel on my chest, and Yuri-san and my brother come in. Yuri-san shows me enlargements of photos from her trip to Hakone, and pictures from school. We look at the albums together, with Nozawa-san and everybody. I receive a gift from Hideo-san, from Nikko. I ask my brother for senmaizuke, pickled red beets. At noon, the calligraphy teacher, Ms. Aoyama’s sister, brings beautiful pomegranates. My mother is delighted, saying she has never seen a pomegranate before. At eleven o’clock I get a shot of morphine and fall into a deep sleep. Of special note: for the first time in two weeks I was able to walk down the stairs to get to the X-ray room.
24th
A succession of ill-feeling, monotonous days where I can’t even remember how the day passed by. Laying in bed staring at the sky, the things to come and the things that have passed all blend into one, and I do not like it. One of the clouds looks like Mussolini’s face, and that was funny. It seems that the X-ray wears me down quite a bit. My brother came after the lights were turned out, sat on the edge of my bed, and we talked quietly after people had gone to sleep. I told him how I longed for good pickles, and also asked for the books I wanted to read. Today I read about half of an essay collection by Hyakken. I chose not to have the shot, and to put up with my pain. I’m working on training my will, so I no longer care how effective these drugs are.
25th
A day when I don’t feel like saying anything. The doctor wakes me from my morning nap. As I go down the hallway and the stairs to get to the X-ray room, the nurses bustling about energetically at work seem strangely dazzling to me. Watching the cars go down the street makes me want to break into a run. In Hyakken’s essays, he wrote about Sōseki’s death. Apparently in the autopsy they found that his stomach was torn and pools of blood had accumulated in his intestines. I couldn’t hold back the tears. In the evening Yuri-san comes. She tells me that her grandmother from Aoyama had passed away. And that the puppy still hasn’t opened its eyes. I see her out to the front door.
26th
My brother comes early in the afternoon. After a while, Obasan from Nakano, Nēsan, and Kei come to visit. They give me a basket of fruit. Kei tells me he has learned three words in English. Dog, Cat, Peanuts. Today I feel quite good, which makes me happy. Kei sits on the bed and shows me how he can draw dolls and streamlined shapes. In the evening, Kobayashi Tsuneko-san comes by. From around the time she leaves, the rain picks up. During his evening rounds, Dr. Aoki smiles and asks if I can hang in there. I am thinking of trying to make it through without a shot. I might be okay because I didn’t nap during the day. Around eight o’clock, Ono-san comes with Yuri-san. In the middle of the night, there is a big fight outside and it wakes me up. I receive a letter from Ritsuko-san.
27th Wind and rain
A violent storm, with thunder and lightning. I see the large trees swaying outside my window. Perhaps because of the weather, I am not feeling very good—I don’t even want to speak. My brother comes in spite of the pouring rain. I had assumed that no one would come today, so that makes me very happy. My stomach does not feel right.
29th
In the morning, Nēsan brings Kei. They bring me roses and a toy cat. Kei again draws funny pictures at my bedside and then goes home. They take an X-ray. I don’t feel as tired as usual. Dr. Inada comes around late in the evening. I couldn’t hear my brother clearing his throat. They apply a compress all through the night. I am able to go without a shot. I am ever so grateful for my mother, who takes care of me without even loosening her obi sash.
30th
It’s a nice day. Just that simple fact makes me tear up in one eye. There is nothing as painful as trying to eat breakfast. In the afternoon the pain in my stomach eases up. My brother had come while I was asleep. He cheers me up in various ways, with stories about our aunt in Yoichi who had sent apples. People are putting aside their work to attend to me, and yet I feel like my illness is not my own. I just don’t feel like I own it. I want to get better quickly. I want to eat dinner together at the small table in our house in Setagaya.
31st
I am in pain all day and receive three shots. Nēsan comes. She will be stopping by the Hosaka home. They take an X-ray. It was a rough day. The sun is so bright I can’t stand it.
November 1st
My brother had said he was going to Yugawara, so today is a quiet day with no visitors. I can see all the students walking along the other side of the street. It’s a holiday, the weather is nice, not the kind of day to be indoors. I read Kielland’s short stories. They’re pretty good. At night, a shot of papiato painkiller.
November 2nd
Momota-san’s wife comes, along with Nēsan. I receive a carnation. Its subtle scent fills the room. Hosaka-san’s wife, Saburō, and Yasuo come to visit. I have a bit of a fever, my back hurts and I cannot stand up. I eat apples and pears. In the afternoon I chat in quite a loud voice.
This translation is dedicated to Chika Sagawa.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you: To Eugene, without whom so much of my work could not be accomplished. To my family, for ongoing love and support. To my kids, for their patience with their hardworking mom. To Eric Selland, Matt Treyvaud, Hitomi Yoshio, for extremely valuable insights. Thanks also to Jeffrey Angles, Toshiko Ellis, Ono Yū, Patrick Durgin, and Miwako Ozawa. And to the editors at Canarium: Joshua Edwards, Robyn Schiff, Nick Twemlow, and Lynn Xu.
This translation is based on the beautifully edited and produced Sagawa Chika Zenshishū, Shinpan (Collected Works of Sagawa Chika, new edition), edited and published by Ono Yū (Shinkaisha, 2010). Many thanks to Ono-san for years of work on Chika’s poetry, which includes the publication of a book of English-Japanese translations by Chika Sagawa, who continues to uncover additional poems that Chika had written.
I wish to give my deepest thanks to Mika Kasuga, for her steadfast support and without whom this new edition would not exist. Thanks to Chris Clemans. To Allison Levy and Dashiell Wasserman for helping me move the work on Sagawa forward in new and exciting ways.
Many thanks, always, to John Granger. Additional thanks to the people who have written reviews, taught classes, led reading groups, translated poems, judged prizes, as well as occasioned panels, readings, events, and other art inspired by Chika’s poetry—including but not limited to: Adrienne Raphel, Alba Doval Rodriguez, Alys Moody, Andrew Badr, Andrew Campana, Aron Aji, Brian Evenson, Corey Wakeling, Don Mee Choi, Eileen Myles, Emily Wolahan, Eric Ekstrand, Forrest Gander, Hannah Ensor, Jane Wong, Jen Hofer, Jen Scappettone, Joel Katelnikoff, Katrina Dodson, Kazuno Fujii, Keith Vincent, Kendall Heitzman, Kyongmi Park, Laura Sims, Lindsay Webb, Lisa Samuels, Mariko Nagai, Michael Holtmann, Midori Endoh, Noriko Mizuta, Samuel Perry, Taylor Mignon, Vivek Narayanan, Zachary Schomburg, and Zack Newick.
This translation has also been supported by the following fellowships, institutions, and programs: NEA Literary Translation Grant, Witter Bynner Poetry Translator Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Japan-US Friendship Commission’s Creative Artists Program, and the Japan Foundation’s Support Program for Translation and Publication on Japan.
Grateful acknowledgment goes to the editors of the following journals and publications, for publishing earlier versions of some of these translations: Asymptote, Aufgabe, Bat City Review, Calque, Columbia Poetry Review, D Press, Factorial, Fascicle, HOW2, PEN American Center website, Poetry, Thuggery & Grace, Two Lines, Two Lines Online, and Verse. Excerpts of the work have also been published in The Other Voices International Project: A Cyber-anthology edited by Roger Humes, Ekota Bungaku Issu
e 63 (Sagawa Chika feature in Japan), Currently & Emotion: Translations edited by Sophie Collins (Test Centre, 2016), and Global Modernists on Modernism—An Anthology edited by Alys Moody and Stephen J. Ross (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). The following books have also featured Sagawa’s work: To the Vast Blooming Sky by Chika Sagawa (Seeing Eye Books chapbook, Los Angeles, California, 2006) and Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, and Originals by Sawako Nakayasu and Chika Sagawa (Rogue Factorial, 2011). “Day of Snow” was selected by Emily Hunt to be featured in the Los Angeles Poetry in Motion program and was displayed on LA Metro buses in April 2018. An excerpt from “Shapes of Clouds” was engraved in a paver stone as part of the site-specific art installation, Dawn Chorus by Brent Wahl and Laynie Browne, a Public Art Commission by the City of Philadelphia’s Percent for Art Program (2018). The poem “Backside” was a source of inspiration for Night Eats Color (2019), a composition by Robert Gibson for an instrumental chamber ensemble of ten players, World Premiere performance by Inscape Chamber Orchestra, Richard Scerbo, conductor, April 7, 2019.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SAGAWA CHIKA (real name Kawasaki Chika) was born in 1911 in Hokkaido, Japan. In 1928 she moved to Tokyo and quickly integrated into the literary avant-garde community. She published her work frequently in the influential journal Shi to Shiron (Poetry and Poetics), and is considered by many to be the first female Modernist poet. Stomach cancer took her life at the age of twenty-four, at which point her poems were collected and edited by Ito Sei and published as Sagawa Chika Shishū (Collected Poems of Sagawa Chika, Shōrinsha, 1936). Later, a more complete collected works, including her prose, in memoriam writings from poets, and a complete bibliography, was published as Sagawa Chika Zenshishū (Collected Works of Sagawa Chika) by Shinkaisha in 1983. In 2010, her Collected Poems was republished by Shinkaisha, which also in 2011 published a new book collecting Sagawa’s translations from English-language poetry, including poems by Charles Reznikoff, James Joyce, and Mina Loy.
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