Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  It is startling for us to think that Takuboku during this period of writing these tanka was a young man in his twenties. Tanka 74 seems to suggest the poet is middle-aged. In the Meiji period, of course, a thirty-year-old man was considered just that.

  75. There is no regret here. Formerly the poet was so caught up in his romance he had not noticed the kanachigai in the woman's love letters or possibly even in those letters he himself may have written to his wife, Setsuko. These kanachigai are misspellings due to dialectal pronunciation or to insufficient training in writing kana (the Japanese syllabaries). The letters were probably not from Koyakko, the geisha Takuboku met in Kushiro in 1908. The word mukashi suggests the letters were from a much earlier period. During those days when Takuboku was in love, he did not mind the errors, possibly not even noticing them, but now that he is older and more mature, he does notice them. The change in his awareness reveals the change in his feelings. The more one lives in Tokyo, the more one becomes aware of the importance of standard Japanese.

  We may ask if these letters were actually Takuboku's or Setsuko's. The following diary entry for December 26, 1906 (during this period Setsuko had gone to Morioka as her delivery was near) is relevant:

  I went to bed about midnight, but I couldn't sleep.

  I happened to remember that in a bamboo trunk in a corner of the room there was a bundle of letters I had written Setsuko during the past five years. When I remembered it, I felt as if I had been lit up by the spring moon in a dark forest____

  I took out the bundle of a hundred and few score letters. They are the eternal symbol of my youthful blood and tears, the story of my first love, no, of the only love in my life, the love between Setsuko and me!

  Reading them, I saw the colors and scents of the past days revive. It was a picture scroll alternating with tears of happiness and sorrow. Our love so rich in vicissitudes would make a good novel.

  Setsuko, Setsuko. I cry for you.

  You were my saviour. If I have anything I can be proud of, I owe it to you. Wasn't it because I had you as my love that I live today, and live with joy, I who twice tried to commit suicide? To me you are the loveliest, the dearest, and the most valuable.

  Marriage is said to be the graveyard of love. Let them say so who want to. But we were and are lovers. This love will continue until I die....

  76. Takuboku married Setsuko in 1905, their relationship having begun several years before. Biographer Iwaki cites the May 26, 1928, issue of the Iwate Nippō newspaper which introduces reminiscences by a friend of Takuboku who stated that in the spring of 1901, Takuboku showed him a long love letter written by Setsuko that covered five to six sheets of Japanese hanshi, equivalent in space to double the number of pages of ordinary letter paper. Takuboku must have kept her letters as cherished mementos. But their relationship was strained at the time tanka 76 was written. Takuboku's not remembering where the letters are is symbolic of the fading of his love for her. Perhaps at the moment he was trying to find them in order to reread them. But why? It might not be a totally wild conjecture to suppose that he was doing so in an attempt to regain his old feelings toward Setsuko.

  77. Those who have suffered from insomnia can appreciate this tanka. They try every means to get to sleep. The least bit tired, as the speaker is in this tanka, and the insomniac scampers off to bed, though of course ultimately he cannot sleep. The tanka is comical to the outsider but not to the insomniac. Young people are especially troubled by insomnia—older people expect it.

  Occasionally Takuboku mentions insomnia in his diaries: "I have formed the habit of sleeplessness" (March 29, 1911). "Sleepless again" (March 30, 1911). Generally speaking, however, he does not refer to insomnia in his diaries. Having stayed up late to write, drink, or indulge his sexual appetites, he often slept until ten or eleven in the morning.

  Yo! at the end of the first line is formal, the poem mostly colloquial.

  78. A diary-like tanka. The situation is comical to an observer but not to the performer, so Takuboku was disgusted with himself.

  The "knife" in this instance is not for eating. In those days forks and knives were used only in some restaurants. Takuboku would never have used one at home. This knife is for cutting paper or sharpening pencils.

  The first and third lines in the Japanese are formal; the second line is colloquial.

  79. In Takuboku's younger days he lived in the country and enjoyed the world of nature. But his hard existence in Tokyo narrowed his awareness—he lost his earlier freedom. This tanka laments his degeneration—financial concerns made him into a mean, constricted person. When a man is worried about the "petty worries of the mundane world" (literally jinrō), he does not have time to look at the sky.

  The expression Kō mo naru mono ka? is vague yet perfectly comprehensible ("That I should become so"—that is, such a narrow, mean, contemptible man).

  For this volume we have followed the Iwanami Bunko edition of Takuboku's Sad Toys, but we prefer to use a comma after the first line in our Romaji rendering in order to emphasize the importance of that line. Takuboku used a comma in this instance when the poem appeared in Wadeda Bungaku in March 1911, though no comma appears after the first line in the Iwanami. A comparison of the first lines of tanka 44 and 50, which have a comma at the end of the line, with those of tanka 49 and 41, which have not, will show the difference in emphasis.

  80. Most of this tanka is in colloquial Japanese, especially the first line.

  Takuboku's daughter, Kyōko, is referred to in this diary-like poem of childhood innocence. She always saw her father writing, so she thought Chinese characters and the kana could only be written on special paper. The genkōshi is writing paper in which the entire sheet is ruled into squares—one character fitting into each box. Usually the writing proceeds from the right, moving vertically down each column.

  81. The end of the month was a difficult time for poor people. Modern-day Japanese use cash, but in those days people bought almost everything on credit. Bills were paid by the month, so the misoka (the last day of the month) was the time for tradesmen to come for payment. In the country, bills were often paid only twice a year, in August at Obon (the season of the Festival for the Dead) and in December. Even in Tokyo, bills were paid at the end of the month. We can imagine Takuboku asking for an extension or having just enough to meet his payments. The poet in this tanka is satisfied he has managed to get through the month—indirectly the poem underscores his difficulties. The economic problems he faced occupied him, so he had no room to consider other desires at that moment. On the other hand, something of the Buddhist recognition of the limitation of desire also comes through in this appealing moment.

  82. It is the remembrance of lies past that causes the poet to break out into a sweat now. When younger, he felt irresponsible, but now that he is older and has more time for reflection, his conscience pricks him. To lie is not considered so immoral because of the social complexities, but at this "late" moment in Takuboku's life, he reconsiders his past with regret.

  In Ase ga izuru, "izuru" is formal, "ase ga" colloquial. To make the expression fully formal, Takuboku would have had to write "Ase izuru"; to make the expression fully colloquial, it would have to be written "Ase ga deru" When the Japanese feel ashamed, they say, "I perspire" or "Cold sweat comes out under the arms." The same expressions are used when a narrow escape from danger has occurred.

  83. The poet discovered a bundle of letters from a former friend. Having read through them, Takuboku is startled he could have been so intimate with a man he now thinks of contemptuously. The tone of the letters revealed the close relationship between the two. This tanka is typical of Takuboku's connections with men. One after another he severed these relationships. A man of strong pride with the egotism of an artist, Takuboku must have been a difficult companion. He abandoned even Kindaichi (see note 85), his good friend who had been a constant source of help to him. Takuboku's petulance was due partly to illness, partly to economic distress, and partly to a
kind of Buddhistic outlook on ephemerality, mutability, and human limitation. Love, friendship, health, even art—all decay. The April 12 entry in the Romaji Diary reveals the poet's explicit feelings in this regard.

  84. A very casual, very momentary tanka. We feel the persons in tanka 83 and 84 are different, for a letter (as in tanka 83) would have been written first with the family name followed by the given name. Shirō Suzuki (1880-1953), the person referred to in tanka 84, worked for a short period of time under Takuboku when the poet was city editor of the Otaru Nippō. Suzuki was born in Aomori Prefecture. While he was employed as a cook in Sapporo, he turned socialist and joined a cooperative farm. At the time this poem was written, he earned his living as a postman in addition to working on the farm where he had once lived.

  Standard tanka focus on some strong emotion, some psychological conflict, but this tanka, a type Takuboku often favored, is so casual as to be almost trivial. Interestingly enough, this tanka is mostly in the formal style.

  85. Tanka 85 and 86 were included in a note to Takuboku's friend Kyōsuke Kindaichi (1882-1971) dated January 29, 1911. Kindaichi had been Takuboku's senior by two years at Morioka Middle School. In those days Kindaichi wrote tanka in the style of the circle of poets connected to the Myōjō magazine (April 1900 to November 1908); their poems were romantic and characterized by gorgeous fantasy and pictorial elements. Kindaichi used a pseudonym and contributed poems to various magazines. He was one of the persons who initiated Takuboku into the literary arts. The Myōjō magazine Takuboku borrowed from Kindaichi opened the former's eyes to tanka. Living in the same Tokyo boardinghouse, the two continued their earlier friendship, Kindaichi helping the other over many financial difficulties. We often come across Kindaichi's name in the Romaji Diary. Kindaichi was a serious student with sober habits. It was Kindaichi who persuaded Setsuko to return home after she had run away from Takuboku. But toward the end of Takuboku's life, the poet's friendship with Kindaichi cooled. The following entry appears in a memo on important events in 1910 attached to Takuboku's diary for 1911: "One change was the cooling of my friendship with Kindaichi... I dedicated A Handful of Sand to him and Miyazaki [Setsuko's sister's husband] as a token of gratitude for their friendship and help in the past. But Kindaichi did not even send a note that he had received the book." In a diary reference for January 3, 1911, Takuboku writes: "In my absence Kindaichi came to offer his New Year greeting. He returned very much embarrassed, I was told." Takuboku does not specifically give the reason for their estrangement. Later Kindaichi became a professor of linguistics at Tokyo University. His special interest was the Ainu language.

  The Japanese often omit the subject in a sentence, a tendency which proves confusing if the context is not known. In this tanka we do not specifically know whose child was born or who was reading the postcard that the new father had sent as an announcement. But since tanka are poems about the poet's life in all its fleeting moments, we can easily supply the grammatical subject and fill in the situation. Usually the Japanese let friends know about the birth of a child by forwarding the information on handwritten postcards.

  In the Meiji and Taishō eras and even before, people were fond of creating occasional poems of congratulation or condolence enclosed in letters. These poems were mostly in tanka form, but some were haiku. Today most Japanese are too busy to write such poems.

  As a poem of congratulation to his friend Kindaichi, Takuboku's tanka is nevertheless unusual for the situation because of its Takubokian personal reference. The poet had been in a bleak mood that day when suddenly Kindaichi's postcard arrived. For a moment the poet's mood changed and he was glad, but only for a moment. Thus, Hitoshikiri (for a while), which is set off by commas, is the key word in this tanka.

  The words hagaki mite are formal. In colloquial Japanese the particle o is usually put after hagaki.

  86. See note 85 for the background on Kindaichi in relation to this tanka as well. That the friendship of the two men had not completely cooled is revealed in Takuboku's diary reference for January 27, 1911: "On returning from the office, I found Kindaichi, who had not come to see me for some time. He said his wife had been in labor since morning."

  This poem, whose first two lines (especially the slangy Sōre miro) are colloquial, is unconventional as a poem of congratulation. While the content suggests the intimacy between the two men, it also shows something of the barrier Takuboku had felt. That is, he felt inferior to his friend, a man of sober habits. Kindaichi had seemed more like a demigod than a man with earthly desires. He was a serious scholar and a hard worker whose conduct was usually beyond reproach. Such a man in regard to sexual matters and other areas is called kinchoku—moral, upright, scrupulous, conscientious. Takuboku was glad to realize his friend had indulged the passions, that he too was not above sexual appetite. Reading the poem, Kindaichi would have smiled at the humor, but on another level there are serious undertones. That he was not impervious to the pleasure quarters is obvious in the Romaji Diary entry for April 25 (p. 101).

  87. This tanka was created in a moment of self-pity. But instead of using the expression "What a poor fellow I am!" Takuboku objectified his sadness by writing "That poor fellow Ishikawa!" There are of course many ways of expressing one's sadness, but Takuboku let his imagination objectify his sorrow. He put himself in the position of a friend or acquaintance who is using those very words Takuboku would at times say aloud to himself. And the objectification deepened the feeling of sadness. There is also an element of whimsy in objectifying that state, but the sorrow of the poet does not become any the less shallow for it.

  Takuboku's contemporaries would have been quite startled by the first line of the poem. It is perfectly prosaic, perfectly flat, but the prose is elevated to poetry by what follows. The entire poem is in fact colloquial except for two syllables, and these two syllables (we might call them "letters" in English) completely change the colloquial quality into the mixture of colloquial and traditional elements Takuboku is so fond of using. Thus the formal iite and the formal Kanashimite miru might have been colloquial if Takuboku had written itte and kanashinde miru respectively.

  Miru is the same verb as that common one meaning "to see," but it has another meaning, "to try." For instance, the expression aji o miru means "to try the taste." From this meaning a new use has developed in attaching miru to various verbs and thus adding the meaning "by way of experiment" or "for trial." Kite miru, for example, means "to try on," while the verb kiru simply means "to put on." The difference between taberu and tabete miru lies in the former meaning the act of eating while the latter connotes "to eat by way of experiment" and suggests that the item of food is new to the eater or that the eater is not certain whether it tastes good or not. In the same way, itte miru does not simply mean "to go" but has the connotation of venturing forth. A comparison of the last line of this tanka with that of tanka 99 may prove revealing. In the latter a state of sorrow is meant; that is, the poet is in sorrow rubbing his swollen belly. But in this tanka the sorrow is not lasting; the poet tries to experience a new feeling of sorrow by the use of these words.

  88. Tanka 88 through 107 may be called "hospital poems." On February 4, 1911, Takuboku was hospitalized for what was supposedly chronic peritonitis (see note 97). He remained until March 15. When he returned home, he underwent medical treatment there, for already complications of pulmonary tuberculosis had developed.

  The hospital of the Medical School of Tokyo Imperial University had many patients in its one-story wooden building with long dark corridors.

  In this tanka dereba is the only colloquialism.

  89. It seems that life in the hospital was something of a respite for Takuboku. For a while at least, he was in a peaceful mood, relieved of financial worries and feeling no great pain. In his diaries he often refers to the easygoing life at the hospital, but he also notes its ennui.

  Takuboku did not realize the nature of his disease at this time in the hospital, or he would not have been in the mood thi
s tanka creates.

  Takuboku was admitted free of charge to the hospital attached to Tokyo Imperial University, which was considered the best hospital in those days. All hospitals of government schools had an appropriation for receiving patients without charge. In return for the free service, these patients were obligated to cooperate in medical research by undergoing experimental treatment. These obligations were mostly nominal, but sometimes the patients were taken to lecture halls as specimen cases. In those days any of these free patients who died had to have an autopsy. Today, because of medical insurance, this system has become obsolete, but even now we hear of patients who are treated free of charge as "experimental cases." Actually Takuboku was better off financially during his hospitalization than he had been before, mainly because the Asahi continued to pay his salary.

  The first line in the Japanese is colloquial, the second and third lines traditional. Nedai means a Western-style bed, which was just coming into use in those days. Today shindai is the word for this kind of bed. The futon or toko is the traditional Japanese bed laid out on the tatami mats each night and put away in closets in the morning.

  90. The poet had asked his doctor at the hospital, "Can I work?" or "Can I get dressed and leave?" The doctor said, "If you do, then you'll die. If you want to live, you must rest." It was at this moment that Takuboku realized the seriousness of his illness. The doctor's words silenced him, and he knew the doctor was right, but he felt the pathos of being reduced to such a state. All the creative urgency he felt, all the desperate necessity of earning a living, all that had to wait. This poem implies Takuboku wanted to live.

  There are two kinds of tuberculosis. One type is called "open," the patient's bacilli contagious. The other type is different because the bacilli are contained or controlled. But the seriousness of the disease is not directly commensurate with its "open" or "contained" state. Takuboku was first put in the tuberculosis ward, and that meant his disease was considered infectious, but later he was moved to a ward having patients with various diseases. Thus his tuberculosis was not yet considered contagious. In this tanka, however, Takuboku expresses his sudden awareness of the seriousness of his illness.