The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

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The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 90

by J. Thomas Rimer


  My hands touching it

  feel as if they were touching Esmeralda’s white palm.

  And along with Esmeralda, the monster

  Quasimodo who delights in storms is hiding near some molding.

  A just soul crammed into an ugly body,

  a firm strength,

  silently absorbing on his back

  the words of those who wounded, those who whipped, those who would do wrong, those who despised, and not to say the least, those who were petty,

  he ground himself to serve God,

  O only you could give birth to that monster.

  How many non-hunchbacked, non-deformed, more joyful, more daily Quasimodos

  have been born since then

  and nurtured on your breast full of solemn, yet protective motherly love, and gentle.

  O Cathedral in the thrashing rain.

  Baton swung down abruptly at the sudden

  turn of the wind and rain that took a breath and has driven itself harder,

  all the instruments of the heavens gone berserk,

  the dance swirls around them.

  O Cathedral, you who at such a moment keep ever more silent and soar,

  Cathedral, you who watch motionless the houses of Paris suffering the storm,

  please do not think me rude,

  who, hands on your cornerstone,

  has his hot cheek pressed on your skin,

  it’s me, the drunken one.

  It’s that Japanese.

  Translated by Hiroaki Sato

  HAGIWARA SAKUTARŌ

  Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886–1942) is now generally accepted as the first truly “modern” Japanese poet, for both his use of the colloquial language and his open and direct presentation of his sometimes neurotic sensibility, a literary strategy seldom possible in the traditional forms of waka and haiku.

  ON A TRIP (RYOJŌ, 1914)

  Though I think I’d like to go to France

  France is too far away;

  I would at least put on a new jacket

  and go on a carefree trip.

  When the train takes a mountain path

  I would lean on an aquamarine window

  and think alone of happy things

  on a May morning when eastern clouds gather

  leaving myself to my heart with fresh young grass flaring.

  BAMBOO (TAKE, 1915)

  Something straight growing on the ground,

  something sharp, blue, growing on the ground,

  piercing the frozen winter,

  in morning’s empty path where its green leaves glisten,

  shedding tears,

  shedding the tears,

  now repentance over, from above its shoulders,

  blurred bamboo roots spreading,

  something sharp, blue, growing on the ground.

  SICKLY FACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GROUND (JIMEN NO SOKO NO BYŌKI, 1917)

  At the bottom of the ground a face emerging,

  a lonely invalid’s face emerging.

  In the dark at the bottom of the ground,

  soft vernal grass stalks beginning to flare,

  rats’ nest beginning to flare,

  and entangled with the nest,

  innumerable hairs beginning to tremble,

  time the winter solstice,

  from the lonely sickly ground,

  roots of thin blue bamboo beginning to grow,

  beginning to grow,

  and that, looking truly pathetic,

  looking blurred,

  looking truly, truly, pathetic.

  In the dark at the bottom of the ground,

  a lonely invalid’s face emerging.

  THE ONE WHO’S IN LOVE WITH LOVE (KOI O KOISURU HITO, 1917)

  I painted rouge on my lips,

  and kissed the trunk of a new birch,

  even if I were a handsome man,

  on my chest are no breasts like rubber balls,

  from my skin rises no fragrance of fine-textured powder,

  I am a wizened man of ill fate,

  ah, what a pitiable man,

  in today’s balmy early summer field,

  in a stand of glistening trees,

  I slipped on my hands sky blue gloves,

  put around my waist something like a corset,

  smeared on my nape something like nape powder,

  thus hushed assuming a coquettish pose,

  as young girls do,

  I cocked my head a little,

  and kissed the trunk of a new birch,

  I painted rosy rouge on my lips,

  and clung to a tall tree of snowy white.

  THE ARMY (GUNTAI, 1923)

  impression of a passing army

  This weighty machine

  presses the ground down solidly;

  the ground, powerfully trodden,

  reacts

  and raises swirls of dust.

  Look at this giant-weight sturdy machine

  passing through the daylight;

  it’s a dark blue, greasy

  fantastic, stubborn giant body

  a gigantic group’s power machine

  that presses the ground down solidly.

  thud, thud, crash, crash

  crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Wherever this vicious machine goes

  the landscape discolors

  turns yellow,

  the sun depresses in the sky

  the will becomes heavily overwhelmed.

  thud, thud, crash, crash

  one, two, one, two.

  O this weight-pressing

  gigantic pitch black crowd

  just as a wave pushes back and comes back

  through the muddied flow of heavy oil

  ranks of heated gun barrels pass

  innumerable tired faces pass.

  crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch

  one, two, one, two.

  Under the dark oppressive sky

  a heavy machine of steel passes

  innumerable dilated pupils pass;

  the pupils, open in the heat,

  rove vainly, powerlessly

  in the shadow of the yellow landscape the terror.

  Becomes fatigued

  exhausted

  dazzled.

  one, two, one, two

  mark time!

  O these multitudinous pupils

  above the road where dust hangs low

  they see the sunlight of melancholy

  see the white illusion, the city streets

  feelings darkly incarcerated.

  thud, thud, crunch, crunch

  crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Look at the dark blue, fantastically greasy

  giant-weight sturdy machine

  now moving through the daylight;

  wherever this vicious machine tramples

  the landscape discolors

  the air turns yellow

  the will becomes heavily overwhelmed.

  thud, thud, crunch, crunch

  thud, thump, crash, crash.

  One, two, one. two.

  THE CORPSE OF A CAT (NEKO NO SHITAI, CA. 1924)

  to a woman I call Ula

  In a spongelike landscape,

  and moist, swollen with dampness.

  Nowhere are humans and beasts visible,

  and an oddly sad-looking waterwheel seems to be weeping.

  Then too, from under a blurring willow,

  a gentle person you are waiting for is visible, I say.

  Her body wrapped in a light shawl,

  dragging a beauteous, gaseous costume,

  and roaming quietly like a spirit.

  Ah Ula, lonely woman!

  “You, you’re always late, aren’t you?”

  We have no past, have no future,

  then too, we’ve disappeared from actual things. . . .

  Ula!

  In this landscape that looks peculiar,

  why don’t you bury the corpse of the muddy cat?

/>   Translated by Hiroaki Sato

  MIYAZAWA KENJI

  Miyazawa Kenji (1896–1933) was a teacher in a poor rural area of northern Japan. A devout Buddhist, he mixed traditional religious vocabulary with his often daring verbal and psychological poetic experiments. Not properly appreciated during his brief lifetime, Miyazawa has since become a literary icon, for both his poetry and his children’s stories.

  SPRING & ASURA (HARU TO SHURA, 1922)

  (mental sketch modified)

  Out of the gray steel of imagination

  akebi vines entwine the clouds,

  wild rose bush, humus marsh

  everywhere, everywhere, such designs of arrogance

  (when more busily than noon woodwind music amber fragments pour down)

  how bitter, how blue is the anger!

  At the bottom of the light in April’s atmospheric strata,

  spitting, gnashing, pacing back and forth,

  I am Asura incarnate

  (the landscape sways in my tears)

  Shattered clouds to the limit of visibility

  in heaven’s sea of splendor

  sacred crystalline winds sweep

  spring’s row of Zypressen

  absorbs ether, black,

  at its dark feet

  the snow ridge of T’ien-shan glitters

  (waves of heat haze & white polarization)

  yet the True Words are lost

  the clouds, torn, fly through the sky.

  Ah, at the bottom of the brilliant April,

  gnashing, burning, going back and forth,

  I am Asura incarnate

  (chalcedonic clouds flow, where does he sing, that spring bird?)

  The sun shimmers blue,

  Asura and forest, one music,

  and from heaven’s bowl that caves in and dazzles,

  throngs of trees like calamites extend,

  branches sadly proliferating

  all landscapes twofold

  treetops faint, and from them

  a crow flashes up

  (when the atmospheric strata become clearer & cypresses, hushed, rise in heaven)

  Someone coming through the gold of grassland,

  someone casually assuming a human form,

  in rags & looking at me, a farmer,

  does he really see me?

  At the bottom of the sea of blinding atmospheric strata

  (the sorrow blue blue and deep)

  Zypressen sway gently,

  the bird severs the blue sky again

  (the True Words are not here, Asura’s tears fall on the earth)

  As I breathe the sky anew

  lungs contract faintly white

  (body, scatter in the dust of the sky)

  The top of a ginkgo tree glitters again

  the Zypressen darker

  sparks of the clouds pour down.

  THE MORNING OF THE LAST FAREWELL (EIKOTSU NO ASA, 1922)

  Before the day ends

  you will be far away, my sister.

  Outside, there’s sleet and it’s oddly bright.

  (Please get me some rain-snow)

  From the clouds, reddish, all the gloomier for it,

  the sleet comes down thick and clumsy

  (Please get me some rain-snow)

  To get rain-snow for you

  in these two chipped ceramic bowls

  with blue water-shield designs

  I flew out into this dark sleet

  like a crooked bullet

  (Please get me some rain-snow)

  From dark clouds the color of bismuth

  the sleet sinks thick and clumsy.

  Ah, Toshiko,

  now so close to death

  you asked me

  for a bowl of clean snow

  to brighten me for the rest of my life.

  Thank you, my brave sister,

  I, too, will go by the straight way

  (Please get me some rain-snow)

  In your harsh, harsh fever, panting,

  you asked me

  for a last bowl of snow that fell from the sky,

  the world called the galaxy, the sun, the atmospheric strata. . . .

  . . . Between two slices of granite

  sleet makes a solitary puddle.

  I will stand on them, precariously,

  and get for my gentle sister

  her last food

  from this lustrous pine branch

  laden with transparent, cold drops

  that maintain the pure white two-phase system of snow and water.

  Today you will part with

  the indigo designs of these bowls we’ve seen

  since the time we grew up together.

  Yes, today you will part with them.

  Ah, in that closed sickroom,

  behind the dark screen and mosquito net,

  my brave sister,

  you burn gently, pale.

  No matter where I choose it

  this snow is too white, everywhere.

  From that terrifying, disturbed sky

  this beautiful snow has come.

  (When I’m reborn I’ll be born, the next time, so I won’t suffer only for myself like this)

  On these two bowls of snow you will eat

  I pray from my heart:

  may this turn into the food of Tushita Heaven

  and soon bring to you and all others

  sacred nourishment.

  That is my wish, and for that I will give all my happiness.

  NOVEMBER 3RD (JŪICHIGATSU MIKKA, BETWEEN 1931 AND 1933)

  neither yielding to rain

  nor yielding to wind

  yielding neither to

  snow nor to summer heat

  with a stout body

  like that

  without greed

  never getting angry

  always smiling quietly

  eating one and a half pints of brown rice

  and bean paste and a bit of

  vegetables a day

  in everything

  not taking oneself

  into account

  looking listening understanding well

  and not forgetting

  living in the shadow of pine trees in a field

  in a small

  hut thatched with miscanthus

  if in the east there’s a

  sick child

  going and nursing

  him

  if in the west there’s a tired mother

  going and carrying

  for her

  bundles of rice

  if in the south

  there’s someone

  dying

  going

  and saying

  you don’t have to be

  afraid

  if in the north

  there’s a quarrel

  or a lawsuit

  saying it’ s not worth it

  stop it

  in a drought

  shedding tears

  in a cold summer

  pacing back and forth lost

  called

  a good-for-nothing

  by everyone

  neither praised

  nor thought a pain

  someone

  like that

  is what I want

  to be

  Translated by Hiroaki Sato

  NISHIWAKI JUNZABURŌ

  Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894–1982) was a brilliant scholar and linguist. While he was living in Europe from 1922 to 1925, he met Ezra Pound and others and began writing in English, French, and Latin. At that time, he also read the work of Hagiwara Sakutarō and wrote about his excitement at discovering that authentic contemporary poetry could be written in Japanese. Nishiwaki’s first verse written in Japanese shows the influence of surrealism, and he continued to be interested in the contemporary European avant-garde, translating, among other works, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

  SEVEN POEMS FROM AMBARVALIA (1933)

  SHEPHERD IN CAPR
I (KAPURI NO MAKIBITO)

  Even on a spring morning

  I hear the noise of autumn

  In my Sicilian pipe, retracing

  The longings of thousands of years.

  RAIN (AME)

  The south wind brought a soft goddess,

  moistened the bronze,

  moistened the fountain,

  moistened the wings of swallows and the golden hair,

  moistened the tide,

  moistened the sand,

  moistened the fish.

  It quietly moistened the temple, the glade, and the theater.

  This serene procession of the soft goddess

  Moistened my tongue.

  HAND (TE)

  The spirit’s artery snapped, God’s film snapped—

  When I grope for the darkness of lips,

  taking the hand of inspirited ether

  that still dreams with the withered timber,

  A honeysuckle reaches out

  spreading fragrance on rock,

  killing a forest.

  A hand reaches for a bird’s neck and for the twilight of gems—

  In this dreaming hand

  lies Smyrna’s dream.—

  A rosebush flaring.

  EYE (ME)

  July, when white waves pounce upon our heads,

  We pass through a lovely town in the south.

  A quiet garden lies asleep for travelers.

  Roses, sand, and water. . . .

  Heart misted by the roses.

 

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