The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

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The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 63

by Неизвестный


  My father’s father,

  And about the Korea of old.

  The dirty wax in these ancient ears

  Is forever murmuring about them.

  On long, long autumn nights,

  In the pale moonlight

  Beneath village roofs

  The women beat,

  Tok-tack, tok-tack.

  For thousands of years

  They have beaten their garments white

  On rocks and blocks of wood,

  Starched them and pressed out the creases,

  And joyfully given their men

  Fresh clothes to wear.

  Ravens wheeled gently overhead

  And the Naktong River

  Flowed peacefully.

  Not like today,

  When village headmen

  Invade people’s houses

  On the slightest pretext,

  Waving papers, shouting.

  Our sons and daughters

  Used to be comfortable in the village

  And listened when their elders spoke.

  But these days, a restless wind

  Ruffles their white skirts.

  They want to leave the village and cross the mountains.

  If only we could get beyond the mountains,

  Beyond the mountains lies happiness, they say,

  And they cross the mountains

  As if driven.

  I understand

  Your betrothed

  Left your poor village

  And is working hard in Tokyo,

  Plowing through mountains of trash

  And sewage,

  Looking for gold.

  He’ll come back for you

  The minute he finds some,

  Won’t he, sweet maiden?

  But, ah! When will that be?

  Many leave,

  But none return.

  My husband would sing through the night.

  He was so proud of his voice, so proud to work.

  Now he’s dead and gone.

  My teeth are so weak,

  I can’t break a thread anymore.

  The laundry mallet has grown heavy.

  The damned ravens won’t be shooed away,

  And the bugs keep buzzing.

  They have nothing but contempt

  For an old woman.

  Whatever happened to the old Korea,

  To joyful Korea?

  Dear gods,

  Will Heaven ever let Korea up for breath?

  Old and young alike

  Toss and turn through endless nights.

  Tok-tack, tok-tack-tok-tack.

  The sound of the laundry block

  Has lost its old joy.

  The moon still rises over the hills,

  But young people no longer saunter beneath it.

  Ah! We are being eaten by demons!

  The old women heard them:

  Chomping and slurping,

  Demons devouring mountain forests.

  Girls go to the river for water and drown.

  Young men drink themselves blind,

  And gamble,

  And argue with the landlord,

  And organize a “farmers’ union”—

  Whatever that is—

  And flee the village.

  The minute something happens,

  They want to sound the alarm

  Tok-tack, tok-tack, tok-tack

  They prefer not to wear

  The bleached Korean dress

  The old women work so hard

  To make white and fresh on the laundry block.

  They wear straw hats, Western clothes,

  Pomade on their hair.

  And then yesterday

  The village headman ordered everyone

  To appear before him,

  Even the old women.

  One after another,

  They streamed to his office.

  He towered over them

  And shouted:

  Times are changing!

  The most important thing

  In today’s civilized world

  Is to obey the rules.

  Tax obligations, for example.

  You had better pay up!

  And then, you old woman in particular!

  Listen up,

  You stubborn old bats,

  This constant racket through the night

  Has got to stop!

  Toktacktoktack!

  How’s anybody supposed to sleep?

  In the first place, that toktack’s no good for the cows. It gets on their nerves,

  Won’t give milk worth a damn.

  In the second place, starting tomorrow,

  No one wears white Korean dress.

  In accordance with the regulations

  Governing modern clothing,

  Everyone wears black, got that?

  Black clothes don’t get dirty.

  So there’s no need to wash them.

  Starting tomorrow,

  All you old washerwomen

  With your infernal toktacktoktack,

  Leave your laundry blocks

  And weave rope!

  Toktacktoktack!

  Damn you all to hell!

  The headman shook as he bellowed

  The young people left,

  But the old stayed.

  Like snowy herons, they doubled up,

  Like hooded cranes, they bowed down.

  They raised their voices and wailed:

  Woe is me! Mr. Headman, sir!

  How many years do I have left?

  And look at what you’ve done!

  You say I have to stop wearing white Korean dress

  Woe is me!

  And put on colored clothes.

  Why don’t you just shoot me?

  Ah!

  How can I abandon the white vestments

  The gods bestowed?

  Ah! Emperors! Ancestors!

  The headman wants to take my white garments

  And make me dress in black like a crow.

  Lightning should strike him!

  I won’t do it!

  He can kill me first!

  I’d rather die,

  Than be in anything but white!

  Woe is me! Woe is me! Woe is me!

  The old women tremble with sadness and alarm:

  They know the power of the law.

  Blind with the fear that at any moment

  The clothes will be ripped from their back,

  They grind their foreheads in the ground and wail.

  Shut up, you useless hags!

  You were just here the other day,

  Weeping and wailing!

  You’ll jump at any excuse

  To interfere with the changes

  Being implemented [by the Japanese]1

  Anyone who refuses to change

  From white to colored clothes,

  Is a good-for-nothing

  Who stands in the way of [Japanese imperial policy]

  And will be nailed to a cross head down!

  Wheedling and cajoling, the headman

  Tries to convert them

  From traditional white Korean dress.

  But just as water flows from deep sources,

  So sadness springs from deep within.

  In a procession of anguish and rage

  The old women wend their listless way home,

  The curtain of night a heavy sack

  That envelops their heart.

  O Korea!

  Even if you make old women

  Defend to the death the hoary tradition of white,

  No one is left to inherit it,

  Neither nature nor man.

  Wasted Korea!

  Only the young

  Know your essence.

  While they wear shoes hard as iron

  And walk with an iron gait,

  The aged tread with a clip-clop of clogs,

  And return from the headman’s office,

  Grumbling.

&
nbsp; As the women walk through the mist,

  Suddenly squawklike screams are heard.

  They are struggling with a band of men

  And trying to flee the mountain road,

  But the men cut them off.

  Damned bitches!

  Wear white, will you?

  Then watch how easily it soils!

  You worthless toktack shrews!

  Take them off

  Or have your clothes dyed as you wear them!

  The careening old women

  Are kicked by young feet,

  Struck by young fists,

  And the young men, whooping it up,

  Pursue them as dogs chase aged hens.

  They raise brushes

  Dripping black ink

  And slash across their ancient adversaries’ white apparel.

  Who would do such a thing?

  No good can come

  From abusing the aged!

  With earsplitting screams the women flee,

  But the men give them no quarter

  And relentlessly sully their pristine robes.

  The pathetic, high-pitched voices trail away,

  A moment’s clamor interrupting

  The quiet Korean night.

  Soon it grows quiet again.

  Their hair disheveled,

  Their miserable white robes

  Blackened in the ink attack of

  The men from the headman’s office,

  The old women, their faces twisted,

  Struggle to their feet and leave.

  When dawn breaks, the old women of the village

  Act as if nothing has happened.

  Calling their neighbors,

  They head for the banks of the Naktong.

  They plunge their besmirched raiments in the water, And for a moment the stream turns black.

  But the pollution flows downstream, the water clears,

  And the old women’s enraged expressions soften, too,

  As tok-tack, tok-tack, tok-tack,

  They begin to beat the laundry.

  Striving to affirm all that has happened,

  Their expressions change to pain-filled smiles.

  They raise frail hands

  And strike the rocks.

  They sing songs of Korea.

  They beat the defiled robes with their mallets.

  The mallets that beat weep.

  The clothing that is beaten weeps.

  The old women who beat weep.

  The stones that are struck weep.

  All Korea is weeping.

  Translated by David G. Goodman

  POETRY IN TRADITIONAL FORMS

  Strictly speaking, no poets can be placed in the category of “war poets.” Some, such as Saitō Mokichi and Maekawa Samio, wrote tanka or haiku during these years that now appear chauvinistic in tone, but such poetry was not central to their work. Other poets, who opposed the war, usually were not able to have their work published until after 1945.

  TOKI ZENMARO

  Toki Zenmaro (1885–1980) began studying European literature as a university student, and then began his career as a newspaper reporter. Toki began publishing his tanka in 1910 and dedicated some of his early poems to Ishikawa Takuboku, whose work and social humanism he much admired, although he felt himself to be far less of a dedicated socialist. His poetry, as evidenced by the tanka included here, often reveals a sharper sense of the human predicament in a social context than is typical of traditional poetry.

  In sullen silence muttsuru to kare wa hataraku,

  he works. mutturi to

  In sullen silence

  I walk

  toward him.

  sono katawara ni, ware, chikazukinikeri

  All the young men I know are penniless. waga shireru seinen was mina mazushi,

  This man, and that man, too. kare mo, kare mo

  All the young men I know are penniless. waga shireru seinen wa mina mazushi, fuyu

  Winter.

  Nothing tayoru mono wa

  but reason

  can be depended on. risei no hoka ni nai,

  That reason sono risei wo

  is dipped in a flowing nagareru ga mama no

  stream of tears. ni hitasu

  EVIDENCE

  abandoned corpses iki shitai

  hundreds in one report sūhyaku to ii

  thousands in another sūsen to iu

  there is no person inochi wo futatsu

  blessed with two lives mochishi mono nashi

  old Japan furuki Nippon no

  self-destroyed jikai jimetsu shi

  before my eyes yuku sugata wo

  a testimony to the worth me no mae ni shite

  of what I have lived by ikeru shirushi ari

  no news of him hei wo hikiite

  after he led a troop yama ni irishi nochi no

  into the mountains shōseki nashi

  flowers of the morning glory asagao no hana wa

  beginning to fade saki sugimu to su

  work on the impossible fukanō wo

  and change it into the possible kanō to seyo to gunbatsu

  preached our past militarist leaders iishi

  our government today gunbatsu ariki

  works on the possible ima wa kanō wo

  and changes it into the impossible fukanō to suru seifu ari

  Translated by Makoto Ueda

  ESSAYS

  KOBAYASHI HIDEO

  During the war years, Kobayashi Hideo (1903–1983) turned back to the Japanese classics, perhaps as a modern intellectual seeking a way of coming to terms with the literary and spiritual past of the culture into which he was born.

  “On Impermanence” (Mujō to iu koto) written in 1942 and labeled a “prose poem,” reveals Kobayashi’s mentality during this troubled period. Note that the preceding chapter contains an essay that he wrote about the state of modern literature.

  ON IMPERMANENCE (MUJŌ TO IU KOTO)

  Translated by Hosea Hirata

  “Someone told this story. At the Mountain God Shrine in Hie, in the middle of the night when no human voice could be heard, before the Jifuzenji god, a female servant, young and immature, pretending to be a shrine medium, tapped a hand drum ‘tum tum tum . . .’ and sang with the voice of a person whose heart was pure: ‘No matter how it is, please, please.’ Asked what she was thinking, she replied. ‘When I think of how impermanent this world of life and death is, I do not care much about this world. I asked the god to save me in my afterlife.’ ”

  This is found in Ichigon hōdan shō. When I read it, it impressed me as a wonderful passage. The other day, I went to the Hie Mountain and wandered around the Mountain God Shrine, absentmindedly looking at the surrounding greenery and the stone wall. Then suddenly, this short passage floated into my mind as if I were looking at the remains of a picture scroll from that age. Every piece of the text thoroughly permeated my heart as if I were tracing the delicate lines of an aged painting. I was rather taken aback because I had never experienced anything like this before. Even when I was slurping some noodles in Sakamoto, I could not stop feeling strange. What was I feeling then, what was I thinking? These questions bother me now. Of course, it must have been some trivial hallucination. It is easy to think that way and be done with it. But why can’t I bring myself to believe in such a convenient explanation? To tell you the truth, I have begun to write this without knowing exactly what I am going to write.

 

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