Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  Once more this tanka is a mixture of the literary and colloquial, sake nomeru kana and shiritsutsu literary.

  18. The reverse of tanka 17. When we are quite far gone in drink, this experience is typical. The poet is not certain if he actually spoke and, if so, what the words were. But as he was deeply and happily drunk and unable to resolve the dilemma, he closed his eyes, the better to enjoy his inebriation. Sometimes a Japanese will close his eyes in order to concentrate on the taste of the food he is eating.

  Me o tsuburu means "to close one's eyes." The "uchi" of uchitsuburi slightly intensifies the verb without changing its meaning. The prefix uchi comes from the verb utsu (to strike). In very early Japanese usage, it retained something of the meaning of the original verb, adding to the following verb the adverbial meanings of "suddenly," "energetically," "slightly," but from about the thirteenth century on, uchi became in many cases a mere formal prefix without meaning. Sometimes it slightly intensifies the meaning of the verb, as in this tanka, but it is most often added to adjust the number of syllables.

  19. A drunken person falls asleep quickly, but once awake he finds it difficult to sleep again. Usually he feels sick on awakening, but in this instance the poet woke up refreshed. Of course he felt like writing tanka then. In Takuboku's day many writers used the traditional brush and Chinese ink, though pen and ink were also in use. One rubs the ink stick on the suzuri (inkstone). The fresh feeling of awakening suggests the enthusiasm with which the poet prepared his Chinese ink. Takuboku often wrote at night.

  20. We can imagine various situations in this poem, but most likely the poet has been feverishly writing tanka in his room. In tanka 19, he prepared the Chinese ink; in tanka 20, he must rest his feverish, tingling fingers on the frost of the wooden railing that acts as a kind of safeguard for the demado, a window projecting out from the wall in narrow Japanese rooms. This type of window sometimes has a paper sliding screen in front of the glass. When there is no space for a corridor lined with windows, some Japanese have this kind of window built into the room.

  In this tanka we feel the separate life led by a man of literature. What ordinary men are doing at this late hour the poet does not do.

  21. The poet in this tanka fears his own desperate mood. He is aware he is becoming desperate and knows he ought not to be, but he cannot help feeling this way.

  When we think of Takuboku's circumstances, it is not unnatural that he should have become desperate at times. This poem was probably written in 1911. At the beginning of the year he witnessed an event which showed how formidable the ruling power-structure was; he realized how difficult it was for the socialist movement to make even a slight advance. The impasse must have seemed to him hopeless. His health, which had been undermined, could not be regained; he always had a slight fever, which at times rose drastically to disable him. His poverty was so chronic that it caused him intense aggravation, and this added to the depletion of his strength. A crisis between him and his wife, Setsuko, occurred in June. Later in the summer Setsuko was found to have tuberculosis. All the members of the immediate family except his daughter Kyōko were invalids, and Takuboku's sister Mitsuko had to be sent for to help maintain the household. Further trouble between Takuboku's parents led to the father's desertion of the family. The magazine Jumoku to Kajitsu (The Tree and the Fruit), on which Takuboku had spent a great deal of energy, failed to materialize. What supported him in such circumstances must have been his desire to live as a socialist, as a writer, and as a decent human being. But sometimes he found even these aspirations too demanding.

  Once more we find this tanka a mixture of literary and colloquial styles. Dōnari to katte ni nare is definitely colloquial, but the rest of the poem is formal.

  22. The grammar in this tanka is unusual. A tanka usually forms one or two sentences, but here we have only fragments. The first line in the Japanese qualifies nezame, so the structure is a noun with an adjective qualified by a clause, but the same noun is repeated with a different adjective.

  The speaker is in ill health. He feels at his most anguished just at the moment of awakening. When he is tired and is sleeping restlessly, he feels as if his arms and legs have become disjointed.

  23. Takuboku was employed by the Tokyo Asahi as a proofreader, so the habit had become ingrained, and before he realized it, he was proofreading even his own hometown paper from Iwate Prefecture. Of course local newspapers were inferior in paper, printing, and style. Local papers had only a small circulation, for most people who read newspapers subscribed to such great ones as the Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, Jiji, Hōchi, and Yorozuchōhō. Takuboku may have subscribed to his hometown paper while he lived in Tokyo, for he sometimes published his tanka and articles in it (in Japan, local papers send authors the newspapers in which their works are printed), or possibly someone whose poem had appeared in the paper had sent it to Takuboku for comment.

  In the first published edition of Sad Toys, this tanka is 25; tanka 24 is 26, tanka 25 is 23, and tanka 26 is 24. On each page of the first edition, two poems were printed. In the course of printing galley proofs, the printer inadvertently disturbed the order of the sheets; the proofreader did not notice this error until it was too late to correct it. But we have followed the Iwanami edition of Sad Toys which is based on the facsimile edition of Takuboku's notebook. According to Saburō Saitō, editor of the Iwanami text, the first edition contains a considerable number of typographical errors, and some of the furigana (phonetic syllabary printed at the right side of a Chinese character) were added by someone other than Takuboku's friend Toki, whose responsibility it had been to get the publisher to accept the manuscript.

  24. This tanka is about an enfeebled and tired mind which knows it is exactly that but at the same time knows it should not be. Obviously the speaker is dissatisfied with his present condition. He wants to be scolded, for he feels vaguely that he has not been doing the right thing. Perhaps he is wondering about his own lack of independence. He realizes he is doing what he should not be doing, so a good scolding by someone might help; yet he should actually scold himself and stop doing foolish things instead of waiting for someone else to remind him of his responsibilities. Of course, Takuboku drank, whored, borrowed money, and wished to avoid family responsibilities, but the last line (Nan no kokoro zo) shows the ambiguity of these feelings.

  Many editions of Takuboku's Sad Toys exist. The Iwanami Bunko edition (1946) follows the facsimile edition of Takuboku's notebook, though we know the notebook was not Takuboku's final draft, that Takuboku himself wished to make some alterations before sending the poems to the publisher (see the postscript to Sad Toys). The Kadokawa edition (1967) follows the first edition of Sad Toys, but according to the editor of the Iwanami edition, that first printing had many typographical errors. We have chosen mainly to follow the Iwanami text for our Romaji renderings, but occasionally we have preferred the Kadokawa. The Kadokawa edition cites the third line of this tanka as "Nan no kokoro zo," while the Iwanami edition cites the line Nani no kokoro zo. In the more formal kanbun style (Chinese classics read in Japanese style pronunciation—the extremely literary style), the Chinese character is usually read nan and not nani. This last line in the Japanese makes the style more formal and at the same time more forceful.

  25. Those who have had long illnesses can appreciate this poem. Perpetual numbness is a sign of ill health, the disturbance in the circulation of the blood a foreshadowing of illness, especially in a person as young as the poet was. This tanka was published in the January 1911 issue of Waseda Bungaku magazine, and Takuboku was hospitalized in February of the same year. Tanka 22 also reveals symptoms of illness.

  Though Takuboku was honest, he lacked Japanese stoicism, and it is characteristic of him, as in this tanka, to feel self-pity.

  In his diary entry for February 22, 1911, he writes: "The numbness in my thigh, which I had forgotten about since my abdomen became bloated, has recurred."

  The first line, Asana asana, is very formal; the second l
ine and the last half of the third line are formal; Shita ni shite neta hō no is colloquial.

  26. There were no trains before the Meiji period, so the subject was quite new for tanka. Because of the simile Takuboku uses, the pain the poet feels must have been overpowering. In those days even though locomotives were slow, they were symbols of superlative power. We feel as if the poet has been experiencing in his mind the power of an onrushing train. The speaker does not specify the pain, but loneliness is part of every wasteland, so there is the impact of the poignancy of agony and its power and the loneliness accompanying it.

  The cleverness in this tanka consists in the turn of the usual Japanese expression kisha ga tōru (the train goes through) to what would be equivalent to saying nayami ga tōru (the agony goes through), an expression the Japanese do not use.

  27. This tanka seems un-Takubokian because the moment is less actual than it is imagined. On the other hand, we feel the honesty of this psychological moment, for the poet was longing to return to nature. Takuboku was living in a boardinghouse in Tokyo and yearning, despite the beautiful landscapes in Tokyo in those days, to escape to more natural settings. When the poet came to the outskirts of the city, his thirst for nature was alleviated. The joy he felt perhaps reminded him of something lost, probably the views of nature found in his native place, Shibutami, which he so dearly loved; consequently, the suburb he visited offered him only a semblance of what he could see in his village. The mingled feeling of love and regret probably called forth the simile.

  28. The poet had boarded a train simply for the pleasure of the experience. The trip would have been very short. During his Tokyo days, Takuboku had no need to ride trains. He went from home to office and back by streetcar. Of course, travel was a luxury at that time. A main railway line went from Tokyo to Aomori Prefecture.

  A series of poems in A Handful of Sand may be cited on Shibutami village, one of which follows: "So dear Shibutami village,/ I remember its hills!/ I remember its river!" We also find the following poem about Ueno Station: "How dear my native dialect!/ Only to hear it/ Did I go among the station crowds!"

  29. But the writer does not think he will live to see the new age he has predicted. This tanka shows Takuboku's limitations as a revolutionary: he really does believe in a new Japan and thinks about revolution and change, yet he knows the transformation will take too long. Theoretically he believes, but actually he doubts if the "new dawn" will come in the near future. It does not matter if the revolution occurs before his death or after—it is still too remote a possibility for him. Critics today make much of Takuboku's socialist inclinations, but he could not have joined the movement—he lacked strength and persistence, qualities necessary for the true radical. Takuboku was, in fact, old-fashioned in his daily life. To his wife he was a typically Japanese husband-tyrant.

  The first line is a standard socialist cry, but in those days such an utterance must have struck the Japanese as new and even alarming. An expression like "a new dawn" was all right, but Takuboku would have risked a confrontation with the authorities if he had written, "I believe in revolution."

  This tanka serves as a further illustration that Takuboku revised a number of these tanka before he set them down in his gray notebook. When this poem was first published in the January 1911 issue of Waseda Bungaku magazine, Takuboku used as the last word in the first line chō instead of to yū, the former being an older literary form.

  30. A diary-like poem. When one is poor, as Takuboku was, there is a hunger for possessions. At this moment of polishing his metal kiseru, the poet thought deeply about the necessities and discovered he desired only a few things. Immediately before this key moment, the poet had felt the urge of wanting much more than he actually had, but the polishing of his pipe quieted him down. A rare moment of contentment, the polishing of the pipe a simple need.

  The kiseru in this tanka might have had a middle section of bamboo instead of being an all-metal one. The length of a kiseru may vary from four inches to fifteen. The polishing is done by rubbing the brass with a piece of cloth.

  This tanka is generally colloquial, only slightly mixed with formal elements. We find hoshi to formal; aruyō de nashi is a mixture of colloquial and formal. To make the latter totally colloquial, the expression would be aru yō de nai.

  Another instance of Takuboku's revising some of the poems before he set them down in his notebook, for when this poem was first published in the January 1911 issue of Waseda Bungaku magazine, the poet had used kaerimireba, a decidedly archaic literary expression, instead of the more modern and colloquial kangaereba.

  31. The Occidental is likely to think of "dirty mind" as relating only to the erotic, but this expression in Japanese (kitanai kokoro) refers in colloquial usage to the mean, sordid, or degraded. Takuboku must have been referring to his drinking, his visits to bawdy houses, and his irresponsibility toward his family. Such outbursts of self-abhorrence appear frequently in his Romaji Diary as he gives vent to them after a night of dissipation, after his attempts at playing the clown to conceal his despair, and after thinking about his financial incompetence.

  This tanka is 33 in the first edition.

  32. In tanka 31 and 32, the poet's dissatisfaction with his present life is a common theme. In tanka 31, however, he is dissatisfied with his own moral degradation; in tanka 32, he is disgruntled about his life and the world in general. In this tanka Takuboku's discontent with the world and with his own helplessness is more pronounced than his moral reflection on the state of his mind. That the slight satisfaction he felt when he washed his hands was his one satisfaction for the day is an ironic expression of his discontent.

  Sad Toys was published in 1912, but about 120 of these tanka had appeared earlier in such literary magazines as Sōsaku, Bunshō Sekai, Waseda Bungaku, and Shiika, two of these tanka appearing in a letter to Takuboku's friend Kindaichi. Some were published in the Tokyo Asahi. Later Takuboku gathered these poems into the sequence he preferred in his notebook. Thus a number of these tanka are companion pieces, for example 31 and 32. Nevertheless, tanka 32 is listed as 34 in the first edition. Tanka 31 and 32 as arranged in our volume appeared in Waseda Bungaku, no. 62, January 1911 (Meiji 44).

  33. Takuboku had written tanka about Mount Iwate in his home district: "When I face the mountain of my native land,/ I have nothing to say—/Only gratitude I feel" (A Handful of Sand); but the yama in this poem is different. After 1910, he was not able physically or financially to visit Shibutami village. Possibly he may have visited a hill near Tokyo; more probably this tanka is imaginary. Atagoyama is a hill in Tokyo near Shiba Park, and it could have easily been reached by streetcar. Once more we feel Takuboku's whimsical nature: a sudden yearning and he goes out to locate a rock. The memory of that earlier time was pleasant, so he wanted to recapture it.

  Sometimes yama in Japanese means a high mountain or a small hill; oka usually refers to low hills, but it too can refer to something majestic. Even koyama (a low hill with an elevation of one hundred feet or so) may be designated as yama.

  Tanka 33 and 31 appear in reversed positions in the first edition.

  34. Though Takuboku was only a proofreader for the Tokyo Asahi, he must have felt obligated to read the morning edition before going to the office. The irony of the poem is that he was not a regular reporter, but more important is the fact that a poet or writer ought not to feel this way. Before Takuboku was aware of it, he had taken on the psychology of a regular reporter. There is a kind of self-scorn in having sunk to this level because formerly not reading the paper before he went to work did not bother him. Now it is as troublesome as the money he owes, fusai referring only to monetary debts.

  Tanka 34 and 32 appear in reverse order in the first edition.

  35. Tanka 35 through 49 deal with the New Year holidays in Japan. We feel the poems must relate to the New Year of 1911, for in that of 1912 Takuboku was extremely ill. During the latter period he had a fever of 100 degrees, sometimes more.

  This tan
ka is typically Japanese. The problem of poverty-stricken Japanese is how to tide over the last days of the old year. Debts must of course be paid, but no one will come to ask for money once the temple bells are being struck at midnight on the thirty-first. In Meiji Japan, debts were settled in mid-July and at the end of the year. A senryū (a satiric haiku): Ganjitsu ya/ Kinō no oni ga/ Rei ni kuru (On New Year's Day/ Last night's devil/ Comes to offer greetings).

  On New Year's Day the Japanese wish to forget their unpleasant experiences of the past. Superstition has it that if one is fortunate on the first day of the year, he will have a lucky year. At this moment in tanka 35, Takuboku seems to have found some respite.

  36. Tanka as diary. Once more Takuboku feels a respite from tension. The tension does not necessarily reflect Takuboku's concern over financial matters. Perhaps he was determined to work hard, to save money, to avoid the old mistakes, a whole catalogue of good intent possible. But it is the New Year holiday, and he lets his anxieties go and merely feels relaxed.

  Again a mixture of formal and colloquial language: Kinō made asa kara ban made is colloquial, the rest of the first line formal; the second line is colloquial, the third formal.

  37. The poet was comparatively peaceful and happy during the New Year holidays of the previous year, but this year he is not that contented. Still, for a moment the poet relaxed.

  The game hanetsuki (battledore and shuttlecock) derives from Tokugawa Japan (beginning 1600). The origin of the game of battledore is not clear. What appears to be the game turns up in an old chronicle of 1342. The word hagoita, the bat or racket used in the game, is listed in a dictionary published in 1444. Sometimes the hagoita was purely ornamental, hung on a wall or displayed in an alcove. One side of such hagoita had the face of a famous Kabuki actor represented in a well-known role, or occasionally the face of a popular geisha was the design. But the portrait was padded to give a three-dimensional effect; as a result, it looked like a colored high relief made of silk alone. Only the face itself was painted on silk, but real hair (or thin silk threads dyed black) and pieces of actual silk were also used to represent the portrait's hair and kimono. In actual play, smaller rackets are used.