164. In this formal tanka the impossibility of communication is stressed. The intense concentration on the poet's face as he focused his gaze on a particular area of the tatami straw mats in his room made the wife ask her question, but the answer cannot be as easily expressed as the question. Such a serious or gloomy thought might have been about his failures, his hopeless future, his nearness to death. He is slightly irritated by the ease with which his wife asks the question—the formality of language suggesting that annoyance; for to his wife his action seemed mere absentmindedness or daydreaming.
165. Yuku haru is a cliche in Japanese literature (the passing of spring or the end of spring). Yuku aki is also used (the passing of fall), but yuku fuyu (the passing of winter) is never said, nor is summer included in this idiomatic expression.
The question in this tanka involves the mislaid shaded or smoked glasses a patient wears for conjunctivitis. This irritation of the eyes is common in the spring, probably because of dust or sand particles. The illness is also referred to as "spring catarrh." Since the eyes are sensitive to light, dark glasses are used. Today such patients usually wear an eye patch.
The poet is thinking about a former time when he was in much better health. He could then walk around outdoors, for conjunctivitis is not serious. In that earlier period only the poet's eyes were weak. How much better he was that year compared to his serious illness now! He remembers nostalgically that earlier time. Spring itself is a nostalgic season for the Japanese. There are many spring flowers then, but with the passing of spring the rainy season comes and then the long hot summer. In this tanka it is summer now, and the poet in his weakened condition finds his eyes too sensitive to the glare of summer. These special glasses had metal frames, so they were not too fragile. Unless they were broken, he would not have thrown them away. There is obviously a very practical need for the glasses at this moment, but there is nostalgia too, and mixed into that nostalgia is an annoyance over not being able to find what he is looking for.
166. Omoeru (I felt) is formal literary Japanese; normally one would say to omotta.
An earlier event of a boyhood scolding is momentarily relived when the poet, seriously ill now, is scolded by his elderly mother for failing to take his medicine. A joy lingers in that moment of nostalgia as the poet recalls his early days when he was young, not so ill, and not so frustrated and disillusioned about his health and his family and the world. His joy also comes partly from his discovery that his elderly mother is still spirited enough to scold him.
167. Akesasete means the speaker had someone open the paper sliding doors for him; thus the word emphasizes the poet's illness.
The Japanese home consists of numerous partitions for dividing rooms, separating rooms from corridors, keeping out the cold, offering protection from the glare of sunlight, and maintaining privacy within rooms. The fusuma or karakami partitions divide a guest room into two halves, the major half containing the alcove. These partitions are opaque, the sliding doors on both sides covered with heavy decorated paper. Some rooms are separated from the corridor by a wall and are therefore entered by way of the fusuma or karakami, some rooms by the shōji, the papered sliding doors with latticed wooden frames. Only one side of the shōji is covered with a thin, white rice paper. Light can filter through this paper, but not through the fusuma or karakami. At the same time, the light filtering through can either keep out the strong glare of the sun or can aid the dark Japanese room in becoming much lighter. Another kind of shoji covers a window or the amado, glass sliding partitions to keep out cold, rain, and snow. The Japanese can also use a two-fold opaque screen (byōbu) for maintaining privacy in a room. The makura-byōbu, a smaller, opaque two-fold screen, maintains privacy and shuts out draughts around beds. A single-leaf screen (tsuitate) is used either for privacy in a room or for decoration in the hall at the entrance; this screen is either blank or ornamented with calligraphy in Chinese ink or with some beautiful scene from nature.
In this tanka the shōji referred to can be either sliding doors opening off a corridor of windows or shōji covering the sliding glass partition of the amado. Whatever the type, the fact remains that the poet had someone open the shōji so that the sky could be observed. During Takuboku's long illness, that was all he could do while lying quietly in bed. This viewing of the sky is not analyzed in terms of the Western idea of searching for God or an image of eternity but represents merely the longing to go outdoors, to move in the world of nature, to feel free by confronting the living, pulsing, organic world.
Usually Takuboku indents a line to emphasize it. In this tanka his long illness is emphasized. The season is not indicated in this poem because even if it were winter, the sliding shutters in front of the amado could be opened, the sky visible. Whatever the season, seeing the sky became a real necessity for the poet.
168. Takuboku was not the typically obedient patient, so it must have been extremely difficult for him to remain quietly in bed. Even those patients who ignore their high fever may be putting on a kind of bravado, for it is human nature to worry about a fever. In consumptive patients the temperature fluctuates. The doctors themselves do not worry about these variations, but patients do. Consumptive patients are nervous and irritable during such moments, as is Takuboku in this instance. All they can do is rely on the doctor by waiting submissively for his visit and for the fever to go down. Takuboku catches the essence of just this kind of moment.
169. The flowers in this poem must be nageire, that is, giving the appearance of having been casually thrown into a vase though in reality the flowers have been deliberately arranged. Probably the poet's wife had bought the flowers even though she could not afford them. The poet on waking was surprised to find them, and they inspired him to write something. The suggestion in desiring to write "something" is that he wanted to create something immediate, spontaneous. An essay or short story would have required too much thought, so we feel that "something" must have been a tanka, something that could be handled and perhaps finished without too much labor. This poem was probably written when Takuboku felt comparatively well. Takuboku spent many drab days in bed, but from his diary we learn he sometimes took walks, went flower-viewing, and frequently talked for long hours with friends.
Buying flowers is a kind of extravagant waste if the family is poor. But some Japanese women, and perhaps women not unlike Takuboku's wife, Setsuko, will buy them simply because they are fond of flowers. Setsuko did like the beautiful—she played the violin, wrote tanka herself, and found enjoyment in literature and singing. A diary entry for April 27, 1911: "In the evening Setsuko bought some tulips and freesia."
From A Handful of Sand: "Feeling close to my wife/ On this day in which all my friends seemed superior to me/ I bought her some flowers"
170. Women's liberation was very much in vogue in the late Meiji and early Taishō periods. Such women as Noe Ito (1895-1923), Raichō Hiratsuka (1886-1971), Akiko Yosano, and Ichiko Kamichika (b. 1881) may be considered part of the women's liberation movement in the early years of this century.
It is difficult to imagine the gentle, obedient, and loving Setsuko as such a woman, but there must have been moments when she wanted to rebel. Once she actually ran away from Takuboku (October 2, 1909). She left with their daughter, but she returned on October 26 at the urging of Kindaichi and Takuboku's teacher. In June 1911, she wanted to return to Morioka to help her family move to Hakodate, but Takuboku refused to let her go. Setsuko borrowed five yen from a friend; then she lied to her husband that her parents had sent the money in a letter, a letter she claimed she had lost. Takuboku discovered the real situation and in a rage told her to leave and not return, having forfeited by her act the right to be a mother and wife. See note 178 on this situation.
In this tanka she does rebel on one such day. Takuboku, bedridden, is helpless to control her. He gazes at the dahlias in order to remain calm in much the same way Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment traces the scalloped edges of the wallpaper flowers to keep
his mind steady after the murder of the pawnbrokeress.
Biographer Iwaki offers another interpretation of this tanka. The main argument lies in the meaning of the word hanatareshi. Most critics have interpreted the word to mean "liberated," but Iwaki believes Takuboku used it in the original sense of "banished," namely "divorced." The sixth poem in the series entitled "Death" (see note 5) uses hanatareshi in this obsolete sense: Hanatareshi onna no gotoki kanashimi o yowaki otoko mo kono hi ima shiru. Takuboku included this tanka in A Handful of Sand, but in a slightly different version: Hanatareshi onna no gotoki kanashimi o/ Yowaki otoko no/ Kanzuru hi nari. The poem may be translated as follows: "I, a weak man, today feel the same sorrows as does a woman cast away," (i.e. a divorced woman). If the word hanatareshi is given this meaning, tanka 170 must be interpreted in the following way: "Today my wife behaves as if she has been divorced [i.e. forlornly and abjectly], and I gaze at these dahlias." This interpretation seems to correlate well with Setsuko's character. Tanka often have more than one possible interpretation, so we offer both possibilities, though we favor the earlier version.
Like tanka 163, this too has its kireji organization, the first two lines violent in movement, the last line quiet, steady, focused. The indented line draws the reader's attention to the dahlias, a new flower—Western and exotic. The new woman and the new flower seem a conscious arrangement on the part of the poet.
171. Takuboku often found the money he needed—and from an unexpected source. At this moment the poet is actually waiting for some money to come, though he has no reasonable grounds for expecting it. Kane nado means money or something equivalent to money. Netsu, okitsu shite, suggests the speaker is ill, but he may not be very ill. He is hard-pressed for money, but because he is in poor health, he cannot bustle about trying to raise funds. Restlessly he is waiting for a windfall.
Without the comma after Netsu in the second line, the rhythm flows smoothly; with the comma the rhythm becomes heavier, harmonizing with the tone of the entire poem.
172. It is perhaps dangerous to make generalizations about a people as complicated as the Japanese, yet it may be characteristic of the Japanese to be weak-willed, to lack tenacity, to despair. Suicide exists for them as a real way out of a dilemma, and perhaps there is in the Japanese a lack of attachment to life. The violent impact of natural disasters have added to Japanese resignation and/or acceptance of the world as it is. Certain aspects of Buddhism also stress the ephemerality, the transitory element, and the nothingness of man's life. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," Tennyson's line in "Ulysses," seems to be the antithesis of the Oriental frame of mind. The Japanese do not even like the strong primary colors—they seem to prefer the delicate shades. Japanese food is bland. Resignation is a Japanese virtue. On the other side of the coin, the stress on the transitory and ephemeral may intensify the Japanese immersion into the moment of now, into seizing the moment and enjoying it to the full.
In this tanka the poet smokes a cigarette to calm himself. He is in some crucial moment of desperation in which no matter how he analyzes his problem, he cannot grasp it. As he smokes, he becomes more and more disgusted, so disgusted that he even forgets to light up again. The poet is headed toward a failure of will, the shock of recognition of the limitation of everything in his bleak life.
173. The first line in the Japanese sounds awkward with its expression ishi koro (about the time when he was). Colloquially ishi koro is ita koro.
A number of situations can be imagined in this dramatically ambiguous tanka. Did the friend actually have an affair in "some town," or did it actually take place in Tokyo? Did the event happen, or was the friend merely bragging? If the love affair was so painful to the friend, he might not have revealed it, so perhaps the lie was in the speaker's feigned intensity of affection. Whatever the situation or whatever the lie, it is the poet's sadness that moves the reader. The cause of that sadness is somewhat ambiguous. Was it because the poet saw the weakness of a friend who brags or misrepresents his feelings? Perhaps the poet's sadness arose in seeing the man's need to tell lies about an event of this sort.
174. Humorous on the surface, this poem reveals the poet's sadness, the darkness of his actual life. Ill, he found his home miserable due to the tension between his wife and mother, and he could only give himself over to this image of a fly cleaning its legs—a kind of temporary relief for the poet, a looking-the-other-way at the trivial, the insignificant. On another level of interpretation, all Takuboku could do was wring his own hands much like the fly, for it was impossible for Takuboku to change his life style.
Waraite minu has a special connotation. "I laughed" in formal Japanese is warainu or waraitari, but waraite minu (I tried laughter) connotes that the poet dared to laugh. With his home in the condition it was in, he probably had few occasions to laugh, but even when he laughed, he must have restrained himself, his laughter not too loud. Tuberculosis patients fear to laugh aloud lest the effort induce coughing.
175. The word play in sutegataki and tabako appeals in this tanka. Sutegatai is a common expression meaning "having a charm of its own" or "charming in its own way." The word is composed of suteru (throw away) and katai (difficult). In saying that the sadness of the day in which he has chest pains is not altogether bad because the sorrow has a charm of its own, Takuboku introduces a simile. That sorrow is as charming as a cigarette which has a good taste. Here the word play enters. A cigarette is thrown away after a few puffs, but if it is of especially good flavor, the smoker will be reluctant to dispose of it. The sutegataki applies literally to cigarettes; when we say "sorrow" is sutegataki, the expression is used figuratively. Thus the word play is in the literal and figurative use of the same word. Takuboku's pleurisy gave him chest pains, but he has lived with them a long while, and at some psychological moment those pains are an extension of himself, his sensitivity, his poetic insight.
176. A desperate moment for the poet. He wanted to do something violent—quarrel, break something, strike a girl, anything to rid himself of the irritation, the discontent, he feels. The mood of violence took place a moment ago, but now the poet is quiet. Usually after such thoughts of violence, one will say how foolish he has been, but the poet reverses this stereotyped reaction. He understands quite well why he was so desperate. He knows the condition could not be helped, could not be avoided. And that is cause enough for the pity he feels for himself.
177. Soniya is the Japanese Romaji spelling of Sonia. The first two lines in the Japanese are colloquial.
It is mere whim for the poet to call his daughter Sonia, but we know Takuboku loved Turgenev and Tolstoi, especially the former. Sonia is of course a common Russian name. Perhaps he was thinking of the Sonia in Crime and Punishment
A blank space was left on a page in the notebook between tanka 177 and 178.
178. To the artists of the period the conflict between loyalty to one's family and loyalty to oneself was a real problem. Writers very often wanted to be liberated from the bonds of the family, and many naturalistic novels were written on the theme of this bitter struggle, the hero under the insidious influence of the system. Takuboku was one of those who suffered from the struggle most heavily, though he never more than hinted at it in his writing. He never made it a theme of his stories. On the contrary, he avoided facing this problem in his writing. His Romaji Diary, however, is a frank confession of his attempt to liberate himself from his family, but he did not have the strength to cut the bonds completely. He retained the traditional Japanese attitude toward parents—he loved his family too much. Accordingly, the contradiction left him in misery.
The "discord" in this tanka is not simple. There was discord between Takuboku's wife and mother, between his parents, and between his wife and himself.
The rift between his wife and mother intensified during the period of hardship when Takuboku had travelled alone to Kushiro, his family left at Hakodate. In the Japan of those days, the conflict between a bride and her mother-in-law did not flare o
ut into the open. The bride had to unconditionally obey the wishes of the parents of her husband, so under the surface grudges were formed and rankled the parties concerned. When Setsuko ran away from home in October 1909, she was probably prompted by the pain of poverty and ill health, but clearly her relationship with her mother-in-law was partly responsible.
As for the discord between Takuboku's parents, his father could no longer support the family after he was deprived of his incumbency, the burden falling on Takuboku. Because of the father's desertion in 1907 to live with his former teacher (his wife's brother), we can easily imagine the parent's ambiguous position in his family. He did rejoin the family in 1909, and when Takuboku wrote tanka 178, his father was living with him. But the poet wrote in his diary for May 3, 1911, that in a fit of anger his father had struck his own wife. In September of the same year, Takuboku's father again ran away from home and returned only when he heard his son was dying.
At the end of the Romaji Diary, Takuboku comments on the arrival of his family in Tokyo on June 16, 1909. Reading his wife's letter reporting their arrival at Morioka on their way to Tokyo, Takuboku writes in his diary on June 10: "I thought: 'And so at last!'" The expression, however, is by no means one of relief and happiness but of resigned despair.
Within less than four months after the family had arrived in Tokyo, Setsuko ran away from home. It is true that the conflict with her mother-in-law was one of the causes for this action, but Takuboku's attitude was also responsible. Perplexed by the arrival of his family and actually reluctant to find himself once more in charge of its well-being, he had, nevertheless, rented rooms above a barbershop. His entire family had to live in a small area; the women had to go downstairs to cook meals. Setsuko's ill health was looked on with indifference by her mother-in-law. Takuboku himself was aloof—rather he ignored the family. Not that he had ceased to love his wife. He was confident of her unchanged love for him. Perhaps he could not for a moment imagine she would desert him. Setsuko returned to him, thanks to the efforts of Kindaichi and Takuboku's former teacher, but the poet had been shocked by the action she took. In a letter dated March 8, 1910, addressed to his friend and brother-in-law Miyazaki, Takuboku wrote: "Since I received the blow at the end of last autumn, my thought underwent a sudden change. I felt every single part of my mind had been transformed."
Romaji Diary and Sad Toys Page 27