91. The poet is in a room in the hospital, a dark light kept on as complete darkness would be too dangerous. The poet's urge to cry at this poignant moment is not necessarily merely self-pity, for all patients with a serious illness have such psychological interludes. According to Takuboku's diary entry for February 4, 1911, he was in Room 18 with two other young men.
The first line in the Japanese is colloquial, and the rest of the tanka is formal, though Wake mo naku is both colloquial and formal.
A distinct feature of Sad Toys is that Takuboku attempted to break with some of the traditions of tanka in a much more thoroughgoing way than he had in his earlier tanka collection, A Handful of Sand. In the latter volume the division of each tanka into three lines gave a fresh visual effect, but for the most part his rhythms were traditional. In Sad Toys, however, Takuboku consciously tried to depart from traditional rhythms by bringing those rhythms closer to speech. He also experimented with punctuation. He had earlier written this tanka with commas at the end of each of the first two lines (March 1911 issue of Bunshō Sekai), but since the resulting rhythm was awkward with the commas, he eliminated these in his gray notebook; at least we conjecture this to be the case.
92. Many of these hospital tanka represent diary-like moments. In Japanese there is the expression dōbyō ai awaremu (patients of the same disease pity each other). Takuboku's pathetic realization in this tanka is that each patient has his own inner torment. All patients have individual illnesses and circumstances, but in common they share illness, the inability to work, and the fear of death. What makes a man cry, though, is probably not the fear of death but his fear concerning the survival of his family, especially if the patient is the breadwinner.
93. Only at first was Takuboku confined to his bed because of the necessity for absolute rest. This tanka is perfectly understandable to anyone who has been hospitalized for a considerable period of time, the enforced rest through hospitalization making the commonplace in the outside world seem fresh.
The first eight words in Romaji are colloquial, the last five formal.
94. A diary entry for February 10, 1911: "The man in the next bed complained to the nurse that he coughs because of cigarette smoke, so I have been obliged to stop smoking in the room. Towards evening I could no longer restrain myself, and going out to the corridor, I smoked one cigarette....In a Hakodate newspaper there was an article about one of the condemned anarchists who, after smoking three cigarettes in succession before execution, said, 'Now I am satisfied.' O tobacco!"
On February 11: "Many times I went out into the corridor and smoked."
On February 12: "... smoked with my head out the window."
On a fine day a patient is sad because he cannot go outside—the good weather makes him feel even sadder. Apparently Takuboku was not prohibited from smoking, though his doctor must have advised him not to.
Takuboku used the line Byōshitsu no mado ni motarete (leaning against a hospital window) in tanka 93 and 94. In tanka 103, the line reads Byōin no mado ni yoritsutsu. Yoritsutsu and motarete are synonyms, but the former is formal, the latter colloquial.
95. A common hospital experience. Someone died, and there was a stir in the corridors and the victim's room. In the old-type hospital building, noises in the corridor were clearly audible in the patients' rooms. This tanka underscores the poet's wish to live; he is so shocked by the death of another sick person that Takuboku thinks about his own life and possible death. Usually patients about to die are removed from their wards and put into private rooms. Hospital personnel endeavor to perform the necessary procedures as quietly as possible in order to avoid distressing the other patients. But many of the inmates know of the death because of the hurried footsteps of doctors and nurses and whispered orders.
Hito ya shinitaran in this formal tanka is especially formal. Colloquially one would say, Dare ka shinda no darō. The to in the second line implies to omotte (thinking, wondering).
96. Was the nurse the same one? Kangofu no te in Japanese can mean one nurse's hand(s) or nurses' hands. We prefer to translate the reference as singular. If the hands are different, the situation is not as interesting. The poem is mainly an observation with no criticism intended. The patient, in this instance the poet, is an observer of men and women, of human nature. Outwardly nurses look impersonal, but once some contact is made, in this situation feeling the pulse, differences begin to emerge and nurses take on a personal quality.
97. Takuboku's diary entry for February 4, 1911: "I decided to be hospitalized at once. After going home to pack my things, I went to the university hospital at half past two and entered Room 18, Aoyama Internal Department [the Department of Internal Medicine had two divisions: one presided over by a Dr. Aoyama, the other by Dr. Miura]. Two other roommates. Towards evening, examination by Dr. Arima. I had an ordinary meal for dinner.
"My first night in the hospital was lonely. I felt as if I had been thrust far out of the world. The life I had thought chaotic in the rooms upstairs of the barber, I now missed. In the long corridor footsteps arose and then died away. The lamp was too dark to read by. Before I realized it, I fell asleep."
Takuboku was first examined on February 1, 1911. The doctor said his case was serious, but when Takuboku went home, he did not believe what the doctor had told him, namely, that he would have to be hospitalized for three months. On February 3, Masao Ota, a famous poet and doctor (1885-1945), examined Takuboku and informed him that even though his chest was all right, he should be hospitalized. It was then that Takuboku decided to enter the Tokyo University Medical School Hospital. Takuboku did not know at that time if his "tuberculosis" was contagious or not. Such a word as tuberculosis was dreaded in the old days, and it was not usually used by doctors because of the universal fear among Japanese regarding this disease. If a person in one's family was said to have tuberculosis, the family would be regarded as having a bad strain. Leprosy and tuberculosis ranked together in this area. The doctors told Takuboku he had chronic peritonitis.
On February 6, Takuboku felt too much at ease in the hospital. He tired of reading and could not write any poems. On February 7, the fluid in his abdomen was drained by a minor operation. About three liters of fluid were removed by syringe. Takuboku felt as if he had the urge to eat, but joking about the situation, he suddenly fainted. The fluid was the color of whiskey. This tanka reveals a kind of bravado on Takuboku's part. He is trying to show he can take it, no matter what happens, but in his diary he does indicate his fear about his illness.
On another level of interpretation: when a person is hospitalized, he is excited, so he usually cannot sleep the first night, but in this instance the poet was able to; therefore, he felt somewhat cheated, somewhat disappointed. One reason Takuboku was this relaxed was due to his ignorance about the real nature of his illness. He had little knowledge of medicine.
All three lines are formal. In colloquial Japanese the formal forms irite and yū ni are haitte and yū noni respectively.
98. This tanka may be considered to have no direct connection to these hospital poems, but since it was published in the March 1911 issue of Waseda Bungaku, it was probably written during the period of hospitalization, February 4-March 15, or very soon after. Once hospitalized, a patient remembers his past life because he now has enormous blocks of time. Takuboku reflected on his past pride. What a change has taken place, for he is now helpless in this hospital room. He realizes the limits life imposes on all men. Still, a kind of maturing has occurred in a short period of time. Perhaps only illness or crisis can bring on this awareness of self.
We must also take into consideration the fact that Takuboku was received as a free patient, as a charity case. Until that day he had enjoyed a certain prestige as a poet in spite of his poverty, but now he found himself among the lowest in the social scale. In a hospital, patients are made class-conscious in a strange way. The size of the room, its furnishings, the quality of bedding, the numbers of visitors and their own personal appearance, al
l these indicate social class. Furthermore, subtle differences in the attitudes of doctors and nurses toward patients make the sick aware of differences in financial and social status. A free patient naturally feels inferior.
99. According to Takuboku's diary entry for February 7, 1911, about three liters of fluid were drained from his abdomen that day. The following day the pain in his swollen belly was "greatly eased." On February 12, the swelling began again. On February 15, he was moved from the tuberculosis ward to a general ward because he was "clearly free from complications." Apparently he thought he was safe from pulmonary tuberculosis. On February 22, he felt some pain in his chest, which was diagnosed as due to pleurisy. In those days people believed pleurisy and tuberculosis were different diseases.
Peritonitis patients have a swollen belly. If tuberculosis appears in the lungs, the germs circulate through the blood stream, and sometimes these germs enter the kidneys and intestines. In peritonitis the membrane enveloping the intestines has become infected with germs from the lungs. Lymph is produced from the irritation.
Takuboku thought that to be ill was to be in pain, but in this tanka the poet feels no discomfort. He cannot go out since complete rest has been prescribed, so he can only lie in bed. He is sad, yet he is wondering about the nature of his illness, wondering if he is really ill. The simplicity of this tanka saves it from sentimentality. The speaker is restrained as he talks about himself, but it is as if he has objectified one Takuboku, a man stroking his stomach and feeling sad as he lies on a hospital bed.
The entire poem is formal. In this tanka the punctuation has real meaning. Takuboku deliberately put commas around the word hitori (alone, by myself, by oneself). Thus hitori attracts attention. If there were no punctuation, the experience would become ordinary, but the commas intensify the self, intensify the loneliness, the sadness, the sorrow.
100. As usually happens in a patient, especially one unused to a Western-style bed, Takuboku had pains in his back on his third day of hospitalization, but he writes that the pain disappeared after he got up, washed, and ate breakfast. On the night of February 25, 1911, however, he was sleepless due to high fever. On the following day his temperature was above 100 degrees the entire day. The high fever continued for about ten days. Though, he writes, he was told it was a cold he had, it must have been pleurisy. On March 6, he had the fluid that had accumulated in the pleural cavity drained. During this period he felt quite unwell. According to his diary, he was prohibited from writing and was often sleepless and suffered from loss of appetite. He writes about his disgust with the illness (March 4), and he even thinks of escaping from the hospital by breaking a window (March 5). The following entry is found on March 12: "For the first time the doctor gave me permission to write a little. But sitting up and making a clean copy of poems for three installments in my tanka column completely exhausted me. The fever which has continued for two weeks seems to have burnt all the strength out of my body."
Tanka 100 must refer to these experiences from February 25 to March 10. Except for that short period, however, Takuboku does not seem to have experienced much physical discomfort.
This tanka recaptures the helplessness a patient feels about pain not directly related to illness. A complete rest having been prescribed, the patient cannot walk around and must remain in bed. A stiffness develops throughout the body, not from the illness but from the mere fact of lying in bed. The pain first appears in the back and then spreads. The discomfort increases at night because all is quiet and there is nothing to do except concentrate on the pain one feels.
The first line of the Japanese is colloquial, the final two lines formal.
101. The Japanese have an enormous number of onomatopoetic words (giseion), such as bisshori in this tanka (drenched, dampened). A synonym for bisshori is gusshori. For rustling sounds there are such words as kasa-kasa or goso-goso. See Oreste Vaccari's Brush Up Your Japanese (Tokyo, 1940), pp. 233-256, for a list of giseion.
A sick person sweats while asleep. What the Japanese call "night sweat" (ne'ase) comes out around midnight or early morning. It is, of course, a symptom of disease or fatigue, and when one wakes in such a state, he has a tired feeling, a feeling of heaviness. Note that Takuboku does not say the heaviness was from fatigue (which one would expect) but from sorrow. Thus, while the poet does not necessarily know he has tuberculosis, he does realize something is wrong with his system, and that saddens him.
This tanka was published in the March 1911 issue of the Sōsaku magazine together with seventeen others under the title "On a Hospital Bed." So this tanka was probably written while Takuboku was in the hospital. The other tanka in this series "On a Hospital Bed" are 82, 96, 99, 100 and 102 through 114.
102. In the daytime the poet is not sad, but the moment night comes, his sorrow suddenly appears. The poet makes his sorrow concrete—it steals in and settles on his bed. To use the word noru (to ride) is unusual in Japanese (sorrow steals into his room and climbs on his bed), but Takuboku wanted to express the feeling that his sorrow was indistinct and irrational—he does not know the what or why of that sorrow, yet it is immediate and direct and there, confronting him in the darkness. He did not invite the sorrow—it crept in on its own feet.
The word nedai indicates the bed was Western, not the Japanese futon or toko flat on the straw mats. The nedai was quite rare in Japanese homes in those days, only a few rich or a few Europhiles having one. Thus the poet is definitely in a hospital where nedai were common.
This tanka is mostly colloquial. Yo to nareba is slightly formal—to make "when night comes" colloquial, the poet would have had to write Yoru ni nareba.
103. Diary entry for February 9, 1911: "Leaning against the window of the hospital ward, I watched various kinds of people walking vigorously with big strides." Certainly this tanka is diary-like! Those who have been hospitalized can share the poet's feeling. But being hospitalized was a new experience for Takuboku. He had thought he was strong, yet suddenly for the first time in his life he found himself hospitalized. The strange, quite different from the world he lived in at the hospital. There is a sadness in this tanka, the sadness that comes from contrasting the world of the healthy and the world of the sick. But within the dimension of the world of the ill, Takuboku was attracted to this hospital world, its pace so different from the hectic, striving, struggling world he had known.
To make the third line in the Japanese colloquial, the poet would have had to write aruku no o nagameru. Yoritsutsu is formal, its colloquial form yorikakatte or motarete.
Another instance of Takuboku's revision before inserting a tanka in his notebook: the poem when it first appeared in Sōsaku in March 1911 has the third line Genki yoku, but Takuboku eliminated this slightly awkward rhythm by revising it to Genki ni.
104. At the time of composing this tanka, Takuboku was living in Tokyo with his family, but the poet was in the hospital. Earlier Takuboku had hated to send for his wife, daughter, and mother, who were living in Hokkaido and waiting for travel funds from him. Takuboku had not been able to forward the money, partly because of economic distress, but he had also hesitated because he did not want to lose his freedom. Subconsciously, though, he had felt guilty about his actions, and that guilt must have persisted even after their reunion. Alone in the hospital and weakened by disease, Takuboku could not suppress the guilt he must have been able to suppress while living in his narrow house with his family. In the dream described in this tanka, a dream he had in the hospital, perhaps his mother had rebuked him by saying, "You're going to desert me! I know how you really feel!" and then the tears came from her eyes.
Another interpretation is possible. Takuboku must have supported his mother, filial son that he was, in her discord with his wife. But subconsciously he may have felt anger toward his mother by believing she was the main cause of his estrangement from his wife. It may not be unreasonable to suppose this subconscious guilt produced the dream.
Some of Takuboku's poems on his parents are quite famou
s, especially the following two in A Handful of Sand:
Out of the wall in this dark room/ My father and mother/ Leaning on sticks [Perhaps at this time Takuboku, poverty-stricken, was living alone. Sitting in the dark, he thinks of his parents, and once more a feeling of guilt takes hold of him. He has been unable to do anything for his old, worn parents.]
___
Carrying my mother playfully on my back,/ I take one step, two, no more—/ How her lightness dims these eyes... [The poet could not carry his extremely light mother even three steps because of the weight of his sadness over her frail and emaciated condition.]
105. Takuboku was not afraid of his illness. Ordinarily one is, but he was optimistic about his chances for recovery, so this tanka is not concerned with the fear of the doctor's discovering something fatal about the poet's illness. No, the tone here is more playful. Takuboku wanted to hide something from the doctor, but when the man used his stethoscope, Takuboku felt as if his secrets were being pried loose. Perhaps Takuboku had some unkind thoughts about the doctor, or perhaps Takuboku was afraid the doctor would rebuke him for violating a hospital rule or for neglecting the doctor's advice.
Many doctors wrote poems in those days, so we cannot say this is the first time "stethoscope" appears in a tanka. But the word was fresh and new for Takuboku. Certainly he was not used to being examined in this way.
The word chōshinki is a prosaic scientific word, but its five syllables fit the tanka rhythm (Western readers may wonder why the word has five syllables and not three: cho-o-shi-n-ki; this is the way the syllables are counted in the kana syllabary).
Romaji Diary and Sad Toys Page 23