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