Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  144. Tanka 144, 146, and 147 reveal Takuboku's interest in things Russian. He often read Turgenev and other Russian writers. Many Russian novels were translated during the Meiji period by the famous writer Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909).

  Immediately before Takuboku entered the hospital, he read with deep interest Kropotkin's An Appeal to Youth, the first of a series of revolutionary books secretly published in the United States. Sakae Ōsugi (1885-1923) translated this book in 1907. In the hospital Takuboku copied into his notebook Kropotkin's Terror in Russia, which had been published in 1909. Takuboku also copied Tolstoi's essay on the Russo-Japanese War. One of Takuboku's poems in Yobuko to Kuchibue (The Whistle and Whistling) has the refrain V Narod! (see Introduction).

  Kropotkin used the assumed name Borodin while he engaged in underground activities. From Takuboku's interest in Kropotkin, the name Borodin must have held a kind of fascination for the poet. Takuboku's dissatisfaction with society must have led him to think of this alias on the day he wrote tanka 144.

  145. It seems Takuboku had admirers and friends wherever he lived, but he had few lifelong friends. Towards the end of his life he was estranged even from his closest companions.

  146. Kakumei (revolution) was a powerful and dangerous word during the Meiji period.

  Apart from the question of whether Takuboku should be called a socialist poet, it is clear that in his last years he was an enthusiastic socialist and revolutionary, at least in theory. But bound by the bonds of family and poor health, he had to remain a bystander's bystander. To him tanka was a "sad toy," a toy with which he consoled his frustration and despair. Still, Takuboku's spirit of rebelliousness seemed to be innate. He was dissatisfied with the order of Japanese society at the time and intuitively felt it had to be changed before anything else. His reading in socialism was haphazard, as was inevitably the case in those days, so his socialist ideas were not consistent. It is perhaps as inadequate to put too much stress on his socialism as it is to utterly disregard it. The fact remains that his ideas definitely turned socialistic in his last years and that he wrote some good poems decidedly socialist in sentiment. But if he is remembered, and that seems quite likely, it will be for his tanka. His socialist poems are incomparably smaller in number than his tanka, and even if these socialist poems can be regarded as creations of the highest quality—and on this point opinion is sharply divided—he did not create enough of them for these to guarantee him lasting fame. These poems, however, are quite significant from the viewpoint of literary history.

  147. In his memorandum of important events during the previous year, which he inserted at the end of his diary for 1911, Takuboku has the following entries:

  June: The conspiracy case involving Shūsui Kōtoku came to light causing a significant change in my thought. From that time on I began to sporadically collect books and magazines related to socialism____

  This year was very important as far as my thought was concerned. I found a key with which to unify my character, tastes, inclinations: socialism. Very often I thought, read, and talked about it. But the repression of the government was unreasonable in the extreme, making it impossible for me to publish my views.

  In Takuboku's famous poem "A Spoonful of Cocoa" (June 15, 1911) in his series of socialist poems entitled Yobuko to Kuchibue, we find the lines "I know/ The sad heart of the terrorist."

  148. Takuboku does not explicitly explain this moment of plight. Perhaps it was some humiliating experience, perhaps something financial, perhaps some lack of creative energy.

  Do what you like with me, Fate, the poet says. Yes, there is despair here, but is there not as well something powerful in its resignation?

  149. The "comfort" in this tanka is purely economic. Takuboku's Asahi salary at this time must have been twenty-eight yen a month, a raise of three yen a month from his starting salary. Takuboku had no genius for guarding his funds. At the end of 1910, he had received a fifty-four-yen bonus and other income so that he had actually earned 165 yen 65 sen for that month, but at the end of this period he had only 1 yen 21 sen left, his diary entry for December 1910 continuing: "I spent the rest on payment for debts incurred because of unexpected happenings, long-standing debts to the boardinghouse, and medication....By the way, I have to pay back 40 yen to the Kyōshinkai [a mutual financing association formed by Asahi employees] and 100 yen or so to the Gaiheikan [a boardinghouse] next year." For only a moment the poet dreams in this tanka of the ease with which he could live in the countryside on thirty yen a month, but he knows, equally well, that he would have difficulty finding a job which would pay that much. Seeing his salary of nearly thirty yen gone, he imagines he can live very comfortably on that figure in the country. He is concentrating on the additional expenses city life involves, but he is blind to the fact that with his debts and loose spending, he will be in difficulties even in rural Japan.

  150. Nostalgia for home is an important motif in Takuboku's poetry. Though his family was obliged to leave Shibutami village "as if pelted with stones," Takuboku could never forget that region during his wandering life. In his heart it was a haven of rest, a sanctuary, its symbols the Kitakami River and Mount Iwate:

  Like tears/ The banks of Kitakami with willows softly green/

  Before my eyes

  Face to face with the mountain of my home,/ I am wordless—/

  How kind this mountain of my home!

  In his poems, Shibutami is always his old dear home, but note the contrast in the Romaji Diary entry for April 18 (p. 93).

  151. The date of this poem is not clear, but it must have been written after Takuboku left the hospital in March 1911.

  Nareri (literally "became" or "has become") has the same meaning as narerikeri, but keri serves as an intensifier. It intensifies the fact that summer has come. The day before, the speaker did not realize summer was so near. What brought the awareness to him was the rain. The fact that it is light outside even during the rain indicates the season. The spring rainy season is almost at an end. In Tokyo, the rainy season varies with the year (the calendar marks the beginning of each rainy season but not its end); normally the rainy season in Tokyo is from early June to the end of June or the beginning of July. Usually when it rains, the day grows darker; especially during the rainy season are the days dark and gloomy. But the added element in this tanka is the convalescent's vision. To a convalescent the sunshine of summer is too strong, so the rain that falls on a day which retains its light is pleasant to Takuboku's weakened vision.

  152. Usually painful experiences become sweeter with time's passage. The poet is obviously recuperating, for if he were still ill, the taste of medicine would remain vile. Thus the poet is happier; he feels safer, better. Part of the time of his illness was spent in the hospital, part at home. Was it the same medicine, though, that altered its flavor from the first stages of illness through the passage of time? Most likely new medicine was prescribed according to the state of the patient's illness, so the taste changed accordingly. A moment of reminiscence.

  153. The poet's sorrow is perhaps caused by lost time and by the fact that he could not help his daughter, Kyōko, during that period. In the previous poem the poet was happy about his recovery, but one's life is a series of shifting, contradictory moments. Here the sadness intensifies the period of incapacitation of four long months. A child at certain ages may grow an inch or so in a short period, but in the everyday life of the healthy, such changes are not perceptible. Kyōko's increase in height thus intensifies the enormous length of those four months. Perhaps while the poet was in bed, the time seemed shorter, but the shock of recognition from Kyōko's growth makes a psychological extension of that time.

  154. Like tanka 151, 152, and 153, this poem is also formal.

  The question is why the poet feels sad to see his child growing taller and becoming quite healthy. The sadness is complex due to several levels of interpretation. The poet may feel the contradiction between his child's healthy state and his own unhealthy one. He p
robably feels his inability to help her grow in other ways, for the poet is weak from his own failing health. And if the poet is aware of the seriousness of his own illness, he may see the shadow of that illness falling hereditarily on his offspring's now-healthy body. Or perhaps the intense healthiness of the child emphasizes the decline of the poet's body and his own approaching death. Whatever the sadness is, it is complex.

  155. Makurabe (by one's bed) indicates the poet is ill. A young child would not necessarily be frightened by a parent's illness, but the staring would cause the fright. Kyōko was not accustomed to her father's intense gaze. The reasons for the staring may be the same as those in note 154.

  156. A chance moment when the poet is struck by the passage of time. Like our indifference to a plant until we find a bud on it, parents too can be indifferent to their children until some special moment. The change was in the child—perhaps Kyōko did something or said something that brought the poet to this realization of some transformation in his daughter. But he could also indulge in such reflections because, ill in bed, he was temporarily released from the hectic life of his healthy days. A sick person is apt to find his children noisy and bothersome, especially if the illness is bad, but this moment goes beyond that kind of annoyance.

  157. No Japanese father would say such words to a child. The child, who would normally respect her father and grandfather, would not understand these words; and the father would be ashamed to say these things about himself and about his own father. Thus the poet is probably watching his child busily at play, and these words form an internal stream in his mind.

  The first line finds the poet looking at the child objectively, for Sono oya means "its parent" or "her parent." In the last line the poet moves closer to his own child by using the word ko, which means in this instance "my child." The repetition of oya and the use of the word chichi are interesting. Oya is equivalent to "parent," chichi to "father." The difference is not in intimacy but in the situation in which one refers to the father. A son uses the word chichi in referring to his own father while speaking to a third party. When a third party refers to the father of another man, the speaker will use the word oya or chichi-oya with the proper honorific attached. A father during the Meiji period called himself chichi when he wrote to his children. In the moment of this tanka, the poet is speaking to himself as if speaking to the child in a formal way.

  This tanka is in the weighty "kanbunchō" style, which, we believe, saves it from sentimentality.

  158. That his child is as stubborn as he himself was makes the poet sad. His child is lacking in what the Japanese call sunaosa (its adjective form sunao meaning yielding, obedient, docile, compliant, mild). Ordinary children will of course cry if scolded, and even more tears will come from a spanking. The poet laments the lack of that childlike quality in his daughter. The criticism by the poet of his own child is equally a criticism of himself. Kyōko at this time was probably four or five (see note 159). She was born December 29, 1906.

  159. The Kōtoku Incident of 1910 (see Introduction) began Takuboku's pursuit of socialist learning. But certainly Takuboku's interest was basically theoretical. A real revolutionary would have kept such a word as "revolution" secret, especially before his family, for it was a dangerous term in those days. Takuboku may have been enthusiastic about slogans, but he was more romantic and idealistic in their usage than in being deeply committed to them. The light tone of this tanka belies any profound commitment.

  Kyōko was probably four at this time. This puzzling situation comes from the difference in the way the Japanese count a man's age. Before World War II, the Japanese used to count a fraction of a year as one year; therefore, a child born in February was two years old on January 1 the next year. A man's age had nothing to do with his birthday. He became one year older every January 1. Hence the special importance attached to the New Year by children. Some critics refer to Takuboku as twenty-seven, but he was a little less than two months past his twenty-sixth birthday when he died.

  160. Takuboku is often at his most natural in his poems about his child Kyōko. Kyōko is singing a Western song with Japanese lyrics, for the shōka is a song taught at school as distinguished from traditional songs called uta. Most shōka were songs using Occidental music. Many Irish and Scottish folk songs, for example, came into Japan during the Meiji period, and to their melodies the Japanese added lyrics in Japanese. Sometimes a folk song about love for a sweetheart was changed into love for one's native town, as in "Comin' thro' the Rye," its Japanese title "The clear evening sky." To "Annie Laurie" was added a lyric about three famous court ladies of the Heian period, and "Killarney" was turned into a song about mountain life. When the Meiji government decided to incorporate music into the primary school curriculum, the schools were obliged to adopt Western music, for Japanese music hardly had any musical scores. Furthermore, the samurai, still influential in the new government, had disdained Japanese music as vulgar and effeminate, the only exception being yōkyoku, the music of the Nōh play. Of course, some shōgaku shōka (songs for primary schools) were by Japanese composers trained in the Western way, "Kōjō no Tsuki" ("The Moon on the Ruined Castle") and "Sumidagawa" ("The Sumida River") still sung with great affection. "Sakura-sakura" ("Cherry Blossoms") was composed from ancient Japanese music.

  161. Though objective and seemingly prosaic, this tanka has an undercurrent of keen pathos. The moment we know the situation in which Takuboku had been placed because of illness and other factors, the joyful surprise felt by the poet can be appreciated.

  Contrasted to Japanese fathers today, fathers in Meiji and Taishō were much more aloof and rarely revealed their affection for their young children. Thus the tenderness on the part of Kyōko is a rare moment for Takuboku. The father was lord in his family. His position varied somewhat with social class—the higher his status in the outer world, the more elevated his position in the family. Among the working classes and small shopkeepers, positions of father and mother were almost equal, and children were intimate with both. But in the upper classes and in rich families, fathers were given special homage and kept their distance from offspring. Still, like the king or queen in modern Britain, the father reigned but did not rule. He left everything concerning the children's education to his wife. Though the highest policies were decided by the father, it was only the mother who trained and scolded children. The father's role was to praise on special occasions or to chastise when the children were exceptionally unruly.

  At meals silence was encouraged. It was unmannerly to talk while eating. In many families the father had a special dish or two for himself. The mother deferred to him, and she personally served him in many cases, even if the family had maids to wait on everyone. No one began eating until the father did. He rarely played with his children, though he sometimes took them on outings. The New Year was an exception in terms of games, but even then he was often busy entertaining visitors. To the children his was an august existence, but their love for him was instinctive, mixed with respect and fear. Outwardly the father's position was similar to that of his counterpart in Victorian England, but generally speaking, the atmosphere in Japanese homes was not as dismal as we find it in some Victorian novels.

  162. Children usually remember snack time. Like most events in Japan, it is regulated—ten in the morning, three in the afternoon. Kyōko was so fascinated in looking out the window that she forgot it was time for her oyatsu. Yatsu means eight. In the Tokugawa period, noon and midnight were called kokonotsu (nine); 2 a.m. or p.m. was called yatsu; 4 a.m. or p.m. was referred to as nanatsu (seven) and 6 a.m. or p. m. mutsu (six). As yatsu covered the period two to four, 3 p. m. was called yatsu and hence the name with honorific oyatsu.

  This tanka is like a shaseibun (a sketched nature scene). Though the picture is domestic, it is accurate and concise. We see the eyes of the child looking from the second-story window down at the by-street pedestrians. The poet, however, gives this moment dramatic impact, for the child is not conscious she is b
eing watched by her father, who is himself all too aware of the time. What he felt would be merely momentary has suddenly turned into a period of intense concentration.

  163. Normally a smell would irritate the nose, but the fresh ink is so strong it penetrates to the very eyes of the poet. Was Takuboku reading a new book or fresh newspaper, and did he suddenly notice the irritation and turn to look out the window for some fresh air only to find the garden had turned green without his having been aware of the seasonal change? Or, more likely, did he sit down at his desk to write some tanka, not with brush and inkstone and Chinese ink but with his pen and a bottle of ink beside him? If the latter, then he was jarred from the tanka he had in mind, and his eyes went toward the window where the contrast of the green garden and the black ink immediately formed this spontaneous rendering of a moment.

  If the poet had been in good health, he might not have noticed the smell or been irritated by it. This is probably the focus of the poem—the fact that the poet is so susceptible to the slightest stimulus, that he is so weakened, gives him sorrow. He had been unable to go out because of his illness. At this moment he is made aware of his weakened state by the way his eyes smarted, and looking outside, he realizes sadly that the spring passed while he was in bed and that now it is early summer.

  Akira Kawano in "Amy Lowell and Haiku" (Bulletin of Fukuoka University of Education, vol. 22, part I, February 1973) notes the use of the kireji (cutting word) in haiku—that is, the division of the haiku into two contrasting parts. Kawano cites Ezra Pound's famous "In a Station of the Metro" ("The apparition of these faces in a crowd;/Petals on a wet, black bough"). The cutting word in this instance, says Kawano, is the semicolon, but obviously, as the critic points out, there is a contrast between the two lines, really a gap between them which (quoting Earl Miner) "must be imaginatively leaped between the statement and the vivid metaphor." In Takuboku's tanka 163, there is a transitional jerk between the eyes smarting and the ink and the fresh garden. This is part of the kireji of tanka.