by Неизвестный
Then I heard her saying, “How long have you been down here in Tokyo?”
Her question struck me as terribly odd. Why had she said it like that, “down here in Tokyo”?
I asked her, “Hey, are you speaking Japanese? What language are you using?”
She nodded again, and replied, “It’s not any language from any one country. They’re just words that only you and I can understand. You know, like words you only use with certain people, like with your wife, or an old girlfriend, or your dad, or a friend. You know what I mean, a special type of language that only you and they can comprehend.”
“But what if more than two people are talking to one another?”
“Then there’ll be a language that just the three of you can understand, and the words will change again if another person joins the conversation. I’ve been watching this city long enough to know that it’s full of people like you, who left their hometowns and came here by themselves. When I meet people who are transplants from other places, I know that I have to use the language of people who never feel quite at home in this big city. Did you know that people who’ve lived all their lives in Tokyo can’t understand that special language? If I run into an older woman who lives alone, and seems reserved, I speak to her in the language of solitude. For men who are out whoring, I use the language of lust. Does that make sense to you?”
“I guess so, but what if the old lady, the horny guy, you, and I all tried to have a conversation?”
“You don’t miss anything, do you? If that were to happen, then the four of us would find the threads that tie us together, a common register just for us.”
“I get the idea.”
“To get back to my original question, how long have you been in Tokyo?”
“I came here when I was eighteen, right after my mother died, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“And your life with Atsuko, how’s it been?”
“Well, actually, sometimes I feel like we live in totally different worlds, especially when she goes on and on about the minutiae of our daily lives, anything and everything, and a lot of it’s meaningless to me. I mean, what’s the big deal? Sometimes I feel like I’m living with the quintessential house wife. I mean, all she talks about is our home.”
A cluster of sharply delineated images floated into my mind: the sound of my mother’s slippers pattering by my bed when I was very young, the trembling shoulders of my little cousin, who sat sobbing after her favorite cat died. I felt connected to them, despite their otherness, and found solace in the thought of their physical proximity.
“That’s how it feels?”
“And how about you? Where are you headed?” I asked.
“Oh, I just ride around and observe. To me, trains are like a straight line with no end, so I just go on and on, you know. I’m sure that most people think of trains as safe little boxes that transport them back and forth between their homes and offices. They’ve got their commuter passes, and they get on and get off each day, but not me. That’s how you think of trains, right?”
“As a safe box that takes me where I need to go, and then home?” I said. “Sure I do, or I’d be too scared to get on the train in the morning—I’d never know where I’d end up.”
She nodded, and said, “Of course, and I’m not saying that you should feel the way I do. If you—or anyone on this train, for that matter—thought of life as a kind of train, instead of worrying only about your usual destinations, you’d be surprised how far you could go, just with the money you have in your wallet right now.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“That’s the kind of thing I have on my mind when I’m on the train.”
“I wish I had that kind of time on my hands.”
“As long as you’re on this train, you’re sharing the same space with lots of different people. Some people spend the time reading, others look at the ads, and still others listen to music. I myself contemplate the potential of the train itself.”
“But I still don’t understand what this transformation’s all about.”
“I decided to do it because you didn’t get off at your usual station and I wanted to find out why. What better way to catch your eye?”
My head was swimming. Who was this being, anyway? What were we talking about? Our train kept stopping and starting, slipping through the black of the night. And there I was, surrounded by the darkness, being carried farther and farther from my home.
This being sitting next to me felt somehow familiar, like the scent of a place, before I was born, where all the primal emotions, love and hate, blended in the air. I also could sense that I would be in danger if I got too close. Deep inside, I felt timid, even scared, not about my own drunkenness or fear that my mind was playing tricks on me, but the more basic sensation of encountering something much larger than myself, and feeling immeasurably small and insignificant by comparison. Like a wild animal would when confronted by a larger beast, I felt the urge to flee for my life.
In my stupor, I could hear her saying, “You never have to go back to that station again, if you don’t want to. That’s one option.”
I guess she’s right, I thought, but continued to sit there in silence. Rocked by the motion of the train and soothed by the rhythm of the wheels below, I closed my eyes and pondered the situation. I tried to imagine the station near my house and how it looked when I came home in the late afternoon. I recalled the masses of red and yellow flowers whose names I didn’t know out in the plaza in front of the station. The bookstore across the way was always packed with people flipping through paperbacks and magazines. All I could ever see was their backs—at least, when I walked past from the direction of the station.
The delicious smell of soup wafted from the Chinese restaurant, and people lined up in front of the bakery, waiting to buy the special cakes they make there. A group of high school girls in their uniforms talk loudly and giggle as they walk ever so slowly across the plaza. It’s weird that they’re moving at such a leisurely pace. A burst of laughter rises from the group, and some teenage boys tense up as they walk past. One of the boys, though, doesn’t even seem to notice the girls, and walks on calmly. He’s a nice-looking guy, and I’d guess that he’s popular with the girls. A perfectly made-up secretary passes by, yawning as she walks. She isn’t carrying anything, so I imagine that she’s on the way back to the office from an errand. I can tell that she doesn’t want to go back to work; the weather’s too nice for that. A businessman gulping down some vitamin beverage by the kiosk, other people waiting for friends. Some of them are reading paperbacks, others are people watching as they wait.
One finally catches sight of the friend she’s been waiting for and runs to greet him. The elderly lady who walks slowly into my field of vision; the line of yellow and green and white taxis at the taxi stand that roar away from the station, one after another. The solid, weathered buildings nearby and the areas flanking the broad avenue.
And when I began to wonder what would happen if I never went back to that station, the whole image in my mind took on the quality of a haunting scene from an old movie, one fraught with meaning. All the living beings there suddenly became objects of my affection. Someday when I die, and only my sod exists, and my spirit comes home on a summer evening during the Bon Buddhist festival, that’s probably what the world will look like to me.
And then Atsuko appears, walking slowly toward the station in the summer heat. She has her hair pulled back in a tight bun, even though I’ve told her that it makes her look dowdy. Her eyelids are so heavy that I wonder whether she can actually see anything, plus she’s squinting now because of the glaring sun and her eyes have narrowed down to practically nothing. She’s carrying a big bag instead of a shopping basket. She looks hungrily at the stuffed waffles in the little stall by the station, and even pauses for a moment as if she were going to stop and buy one, but then she changes her mind and walks into the drugstore instead. She stands for a long while in front of the sham
poo section.
Come on, Atsuko, they’re all the same. Just pick one. You look so serious! Shampoo is not something worth wasting time on. But she can’t decide and keeps standing there, until a man rushing through the store bumps into her. Atsuko stumbles and then says she’s sorry to the man. He bumped into you! You’re not the one who should apologize. You should be as hard on him as you are on me.
Finally, Atsuko finds the perfect shampoo, and she takes it up to the cash register, where she starts chatting with the cashier. She’s smiling sweetly. She leaves the store, a slender figure of a woman, becoming a mere black line as she recedes into the distance. A tiny black line. But I can tell that she’s walking lightly, though slowly, and drinking in the air of this small town.
Our house is Atsuko’s universe, and she fills it with small objects, all of her own choosing. She picks each of them as carefully as she did that bottle of shampoo. And then Atsuko comes to be someone who is neither a mother nor a wife, but an entirely different being.
For me, the beautiful, all-encompassing web spun by this creature is at once so polluted, yet so pure that I feel compelled to grab on to it. I am terrified by it but find myself unable to hide from it. At some point I have been caught up in the magical power she has.
“That’s the way it is when you first get married.” Her words brought me back to my senses.
“It’s scary to think of the day when you’ll move beyond the honeymoon stage.”
“Yeah, but there’s no point dwelling on it now. I’m still young. Thinking about it just makes me nervous. I’m going home. I’ll get off at the next station. At least I’ve sobered up a bit.”
“I had a good time,” she said.
“Me too,” I replied, nodding.
The train sped forward, unstoppable, like the grains of sand in an hourglass timing some precious event. A voice came booming out of the loudspeaker, announcing the next stop. We both sat there, not saying a word. It was hard for me to leave her. I felt as if we’d been together a very long time.
It seemed as if we had toured Tokyo from every possible angle, visiting each building, observing every person, and every situation. It was the incredible sensation of encountering a life force that enveloped everything, including the station near my house, the slight feeling of alienation I feel toward my marriage and work and life in general, and Atsuko’s lovely profile. This town breathes in all the universes that people in this city have in their heads.
Intending to say a few more words, I turned in her direction, only to find the dirty bum sleeping peacefully by my side. Our conversation had come to an end. The train sailed into the station, slowly, quietly, like a ship. I heard the door slide open, and I stood up.
Incredible man, farewell.
POETRY IN THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE
Deciding which poets belong in the previous chapter and which in this chapter is rather arbitrary, since many of those active in the 1960s are still writing, and some of the poets represented here are, in calendar terms at least, their contemporaries. But the fresh currents running in the poetry composed during the most recent decades are immediately evident, and more women poets have gained lasting prominence. Furthermore, the loose, even slangy, language now sometimes found in poetry reflects both the influence of popular culture and an easy freedom of expression, often highly personal, that suggest new possibilities for both self-revelation and humor. Much of this poetry is truly cosmopolitan, contemporary verse that only by chance happens to be written in Japanese. Except where noted, the selection, introductions, and translations are by Hiroaki Sato.
ITŌ HIROMI
Itō Hiromi (b. 1955) published her first book of poems, Sky of Grass and Tree (Sōmoku no sora), in 1978 and since then has published poems notable for their explicit descriptions of sexual relations, pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. Itō is known for her incantatory readings.
UNDERGROUND (TSUCHI NO SHITA, 1985)
I was related by marriage and so in August
I paid a visit to their graves. Connecting via the Bullet train with the Chūgoku Expressway
I left Tokyo and my relatives
Behind. The cemetery provided a breeding-ground for light-brown stick insects, green stick-insects, blister-beetles and mosquitoes. Black Prince cicadas and Green Grocer cicadas breed there. My mother (in-law)’s
Unvarnished plain wooden memorial tablet is still on top of the gravestone Exactly where my father (in-law)
Had placed it when the ashes were interned.
My father (in-law)’s
Movements are slow. So slowly it was irritating
He washed the grave. The neighboring grave
Was that of siblings separated by less than a year who died last year and this year. The earth
Heaped up in the shape of two coffins was protected
By a wooden roof. The roof was discolored by weathering
The heaped-up earth was loose the pair of
Six-year olds beneath were in the process of decomposition. Children’s yellow school
Umbrellas were thrust into the soil. I speculate
About the two six-year olds’ real names from the single character taken
From their real names in their Buddhist names given posthumously.
My father (in-law)
Trampled the stick-insects underfoot and continued to
Wash the grave. Tokyo, my family, my father (in-law)
And my husband all think that
I will be buried in this grave.
Translated by Leith Morton
GLEN GOULD GOLDBERG (1988)
A photograph of Gu Gu sitting in a chair
A curved photograph
A photograph of Gu Gu staring
A photograph of Gu Gu squatting
A photograph of the back of a chair
A photograph of Gu Gu stretching backwards
A photograph of Gu Gu staring
A photograph where Gu Gu is resting his chin on his hands
A photograph in which Gu Gu’s cheeks, mouth, shaven hair are distorted
A photograph of Gu Gu staring
A photograph of Gu Gu’s dog
A photograph of Gu Gu peeping
A photograph of a finger staring
I can hear a singing voice
Gu
Static
Foreign static
A photograph of a chair staring
Gu Gu
A photograph of a gurbed chair
A photograph of a binger staring
The chair is doing penance, no doing genance
Gense doing genance
A gotograph of a finger
Translated by Leith Morton
SEXUAL LIFE OF SAVAGES (MIKAIJIN NO SEISEIKATSU, 1985)
*Rorschach1
“This is a female sex organ, isn’t it?”
I was asked.
“It looks like the line connecting the female sex organ and the rectum,”
I replied.
“And there should really be above this a hole from which the piss comes out.”
“But I wonder if such a line exists.”
“Yes, it does,”
I replied.
“There is a similar line between my navel and my sex organ.”
“That’s different.”
“But they are about the same color.”
“Well, then, what is the line for, I wonder, the line connecting the female sex organ and the rectum.”
I couldn’t answer this question.
“Look, there’s nothing that isn’t necessary.”
“But, then, how about the pubic hair and armpit hair?
“How about doughy earwax and the underarm odor resulting from it?
“I’m told that if your earwax is doughy, you are 90% likely to have a strong underarm odor.
“How about slimy blue snot?
“All those things that are dear to me with which I always want to fiddle are not necessary and can only be thrown away.
“Let me say this is really a female sex organ.”
“But to me it only looks like the line connecting the female sex organ and the rectum.”
“Let me tell you it is a female sex organ.”
“But I am more fascinated by the line connecting the female sex organ and the rectum.”
“Let me tell you it is a female sex organ.”
“But I find the line connecting the female sex organ and the rectum more pleasant.”
“Let me tell you it is a female sex organ, and its entirety links up with a male sex organ.
“The portion you insist is a female sex organ is the clitoris.
“That’s where you get the pleasant sensation.
“You are somewhat biased toward the rectum,
“you are embarrassed,
“you are, let’s say, about the female sex organ,
“you are, let’s say, somewhat repressed about the female sex organ,
“when you were small,
“did you have anorexia,
“or did you have bulimia,
“do you menstruate?”
“I am a pregnant woman.”
“Are you having sex?”
“I am.
“But my stomach moves.
“Even while we’re doing this, it is hiccupping.
“Its regular stimulation of my intestines bothers me.
“I have confirmed that all children are turds