Romaji Diary and Sad Toys
Page 29
Bulbs in those days had carbon filaments, not those of tungsten. The bulbs were dark, five to sixteen candlepower at most, though the size of the bulb was rather large. The bulbs were shaped like eggplants with a protuberance at the top which was formed when the small hole from which the air had been sucked was fused after producing a vacuum. The bulbs were of transparent glass, and the carbon filaments forming a double loop could easily be seen.
191. The poet wanted to surprise his daughter with the doll he bought for her, but he found her taking a nap. There is a calm here, a resignation, as the poet quietly amuses himself with the toy doll. The mood of this tanka contrasts with that of tanka 186.
192. Once more in these last poems of Sad Toys, we feel the change in Takuboku's mood. If he had been stronger and his health had not declined, he would have been sarcastic or angry over the look his sister gave. In this instance he felt sad because she seemed bigoted to him, the two lines in the Japanese interpreted as "She gave me a pitying look, making me sad." A materialist, Takuboku could not regard Christ as divine, but only as a human being. Even though Takuboku is near death, he cannot believe in Christ, though the poet was interested in the Bible during his younger days. Buddha was a man, so it is easy for a Japanese to regard Christ in the same way. If Mitsuko had not been his beloved sister and if his health had been better, Takuboku might have ridiculed her. At this stage in his life, however, Takuboku has lost his former acerbity, and his mind is quieter, the way the evening sky is after a storm.
In order to become a missionary, Takuboku's sister Mitsuko entered Seishi Jogakuin, a mission school for women in Nagoya. When she was staying with a Miss Evans living in Asahikawa in Hokkaido, she was sent for by her brother to help keep his house, for both his mother and wife were ill. Mitsuko arrived on August 10, 1911, and returned to Nagoya in October. During her stay at her brother's, her father ran away from home taking some of her money. Miyazaki, Takuboku's friend who later married Setsuko's sister, first fell in love with Mitsuko, but she seems to have been indifferent, and Takuboku did not approve of the marriage; instead the poet recommended Miyazaki marry Setsuko's sister. Later Mitsuko married a Mr. Miura.
Kurisuto is a new pronunciation in Japanese. Earlier, uneducated Japanese had said Kirisuto on hearing the word Christ or Christus, but from the end of the Meiji period to Taishō, intellectuals changed the pronunciation to Kurisuto. Japanese has no such combination as kri—the sound has to be kuri or kiri, the latter nearer to the combination kri than the former when pronounced by a Japanese. Meiji intellectuals found that the sound of ch is k and not ki, but they equated the European k sound to the Japanese ku. The result was that the pronunciation of Christ by Japanese became more removed from the original sound than it had been earlier.
193. The poet was ill in bed, perhaps with a fever, but he asked his wife or mother to bring his pillow out to the verandah (the engawa), usually a corridor inside the house downstairs facing the garden. The poet could not look up at the strong sun during the day, but the evening sky provided the exact light and calm for a weak man. In his stronger days Takuboku would have explicitly stated his sorrow over the fact that he could not enjoy the sky, but here there is no anger or sorrow that he must ask others to put out his pillow and perhaps even his bedding. He simply describes the fact amid a deepening quiet of resignation, of acceptance.
During this season the glass doors of the engawa remain open.
194. Compare this tanka with tanka 179.
In this poem, as in these last several poems, there is a natural formality, an effortless ease. The poet knows he cannot afford the luxury of a dog, but he consults his wife, who is inside the house watching him—consults her immediately after he sees the dog pass along the outside of the bamboo fence of the garden. In the natural ease of this consultation with his wife, the poet forgets his poverty, illness, and frustration. There is no flippancy in the question; rather there is a calm acceptance of things as they are, perhaps the calm acceptance of things as they are before one dies.
The fact that Sad Toys closes with these serene poems seems significant. Did Takuboku intentionally arrange these poems to be the final ones in his gray notebook, or did the poet undergo a radical change of mood at the end of his life?