Kanai-kun - Matsumoto Taiyo/Tanikawa Shuntaro

  

Recently stumbled upon this collaboration between Tanikawa Shuntaro and Matsumoto Taiyo published back in January by Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, needless to say I'd very much like a copy.

 

More information at the publisher. (includes a video walk through of the exhibition with Matsumoto). and more. 

 

the book at Amazon

 

only a few days left to catch the exhibition, if you happen to be in the area, via TAB

Three Contemporary Japanese Poets

Another title published from London Magazine Editions, Three Contemporary Japanese Poets appeared in 1972, focusing on poems of the three poets, Anzai Hitoshi, Shiraishi Kazuko and Tanikawa Shuntaro, the translations are by Graeme Wilson and Atsumi Ikuko. Both Shiraishi and Tanikawa have several books in English translation, the latest by Tanikawa is the collection The Art of Being Alone, a selection of poems translated by Takako Lento that span the years 1952-2009, published as part of Cornell University's East Asia Series, a book that I've earmarked to be read in the new year. Takako Lento has also recently translated a selection of poems by Heiichi Sugiyama for Poetry International Web, Last Words and Water being two which seem to remain with me at the moment. Canadian born Shiraishi Kazuko has appeared in translation, notably in the three collections published by New Directions, Seasons of Sacred Lust, Let Those Who Appear, and most recently, My Floating Mother, City, although in this volume only ten pages are given in examining her background and poems, it still remains an informative piece, the poems are interspersed through a brief bibliography and biography, featuring poems from her first collection The Town Where Eggs Are Falling. Anzai Hitoshi is explored a little more indepthly though, Anzai is a poet not much translated in English,  the selection here includes twenty translated poems and an informative piece on Anzai, born 1919 in Fukuoka Prefecture, first trained as a teacher but dropped these studies to become an editor for poetry magazine Sanga, he spent some time editing at the Asahi Shimbun. Interested in classical Japanese Literature and French poetry;  Francois Villon and Jacques Prevert in particular, although his poetry breaks from traditional styles, Wilson observes though that he hasn't taken the route of the then very contemporary Concrete Poets, which you get the impression that maybe  Wilson was none too impressed with. Anzai's poetry captures the fleeting moment, in the poem Snow, Anzai presents a picture of mourning, the poem ends with a reminder that even after people and things have passed, to those that remain fate remains an undecided factor in the equation. Although the traditional seems to be at the periphery of Anzai's poems much of the language used in them reflects the modern, as in the thematically linked poem Disused Railway Station and in the the poem My Eyes, which envisions aspects of the contemporary world viewed around but ends with a glance at the approach and passing of time.

My eyes are the driving-mirror

In the cab of an all-night truck:

They watch time's headlights

Crowding up behind me.

The thirteen poems by Shunatro Tanikawa include the seven part poem A Syllable of Seeing (Portraits of Womankind), the  bibliographical and biographical piece describes Tanikawa's upbringing within an intellectual environment, his father was the philosopher Tanikawa Tetsuzo which instilled an aversion to academical life. As a young poet he was sponsored by the poet Miyoshi Tatsuji, and Wilson looks at the period when he wrote his first two books Solitude of Two Million Years (1952) and 62 Sonnets and his joining of poetry group Kai(Oar). The bibliography in this piece is really good including descriptive passages on Tanikawa's, Ehon, (Picture Book), from 1956, and his book from 1968, Tabi (Travel), some from Tabi are included here. A Syllabary of Seeing, (Portraits of Womankind) contains seven syllable each focusing on different women, the first is of a woman, perhaps a first love, the poem subtly captures the first moments of the recognition of attraction, the second which begins by an observation of a grand- mother's eyes and then the following stanzas explore landscapes which although at a first reading don't appear to be linked, the poem goes onto form a cohesive image of slight decay. The third starts by examining a past lover, the poem then goes on to explore an emotional world that is both discarded but at the same time has a distant familiarity to it. The fourth is a poem which has an air of a measured reconciliation contrasted with images of a mixture of emotions that have either escaped or are unattained. The fifth begins with an observation of a daughter and is a meditation on a world of possibilities, the sixth is a retrospective glance of the narrator's mother, and memories from childhood, reaching the seventh syllable we discover that the narrator of the syllables is that of a woman, which by turns forces the reader to reconsider the perspectives of the preceding pieces, the last syllable is a self portrait. This is an interesting introductory book to these three very different poets which will be of interest to those both familiar and new to the poets it looks at.

           

A SYLLABARY OF SEEING
(Portraits of Womankind)


THE SECOND SYLLABLE


I look at a woman,
My mother's mother. I look at the huge,
Serenely black

Eyes of the gentle
Reptiles whom the earth wiped out
Millennia back.

I look at a sinking
Sailing-dinghy whose jib-sail flickers
In the running tide.

At a line of beach-guards
Drawn up stiff, like singing skeletons,
Side by side.

I look at a tilled
But stony hill. To that stoniness
My eyes return,

To a hillside seared
With the marks of flame, with the ulceration
Of after-burn.

At cheeks inflamed
By imminent flesh, by the body's mantle
About to fall.

And I look at Medusa's
Head observed in the hustle and bustle
Of carnival.  

   

62 Sonnets + 36

Published by Shueisha Bunko,who also published Tanikawa's Two Billion Light Years of Solitude, 62 Sonnets + 36 is a dual text edition of Shuntaro Tanikawa's 1953 collection of poems, translated again by William I.Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. In the afterword by the author he mentions his disbelief that poems he wrote half a century ago are still being read. 62 Sonnets is in three parts, and this edition comes with an additional 36 poems. As the translators point out in their preface these sonnets are not to be confused with that of Petrarca or indeed that of Shakespeare but here represent Shuntaro Tanikawa's love of life, an aspect that is to be found throughout his poems. The poem 'Expanse' shows another of his poem's subjects, that of solitude, and in this collection the word 'absence' crops up a few times, but I think it's also used in a way that eludes to feelings of solitude, but in Expanse the poem explores aloneness, 'surrounded by things indifferent to me' and also the subtle influence of the presence of time and that of it's end,'Subtle gestures, though, are soon forgotten. In the expanse of which no one is aware, time dies'.

Shuntaro Tanikawa's poems explore perception and things perceived, from a mountain, a cup, time's progress, and many aspects from nature. One of my favourite poems here is one which hasn't a title really but has the number he used in his notebook to mark it by, the number 58, perception lies at the centre of this poem, and is used as an observation about human nature,'Scenic panoramas stop people in their tracks, making them conscious of enormous distances surrounding them', then later in the poem 'Yet people contain inside themselves a distance.That is why they go on yearning', concluding 'In the end people are just places violated by distances. No longer observed, people then become scenery'. Tanikawa's poetry is informed from perspectives of solitude, although some of the poems here are addressed to an unnamed woman, but largely they concern the self, abandoned in time observing the elements and their effects.Time also appears as a broken line, but also something that is also continually regenerating itself, so many of his poems have the feeling of first awakenings to experiences and observations, which have kept these poems immune from ageing. 'Homecoming', a poem that comes to us from a universal perspective, Tanikawa's narrative seems to come from a lost astronaut, contrasting an unexplored planet with that of his own familiar planet, the narrator also has something of the exile about him, from it's opening lines, 'This was an alien land, Opening the side door of this wretched earth,' contemplating his stranded scenario though he reflects on himself, 'I no longer aspire after other planets. I will live on this planet with more pleasure than in eternity'. The parallel between the familiar terrain and the alien world is extenuated again at the end, when he hints at the possibility of parallel existences, 'There maybe an unexpected homecoming from this familiar alien land - a homecoming without me about which i know nothing', this line fantastically conveys the multi-layeredness of existence, and of how the exiled are usually the hidden. Identity is something that many of his poems seek to confirm, in 'The Necessity of Greeting', this poem again begins somewhere out in the nebulae and the vacuum,and concludes with the need of greeting people by posing the question 'Could I really be a human being?', knowledge of the extra-terrestial (and unknowing) is observed in 'to confirm the real heat of the sun by treading on the earth'.

minimal - Poetry came before dawn

 

It's always great to pick up a collection by Shuntaro Tanikawa, this one again is translated by William I. Elliot and Kazuo Kawamura, the collection is split into three parts, and contain poems which are in three line form, also retaining a minimal feel. There's an author's

afterword.Tanikawa's poems never fail to intrigue me, in their simplicity they can say so much, in the first poem 'Rags', Tanikawa points out that he has nothing to give poetry, rather he is the given, his poetry hovers between nature and desire, emotion and time. A good example of Tanikawa's observations on people, poetry and nature can be seen in the poem 'To Reject', where he observes, nature doesn't reject poetry, only people reject it. Another aspect I like of his poetry is that a simple observation can have a large affect, small activities like laughter after finishing a meal, are things not to be taken for granted.

 

Most of the poems here have something that  strike me but two seemed to stand out, and if I'm honest I'm not too sure why, but I kept returning to them, 'Amniotic Fluid' seems to conjure up so many striking images, floating somewhere between creation and life, adrift in time, days, now long gone, hints of life before birth, the presence of distant people, the silence of dreams. Also the poem 'Mud', about memory, aging, poetry, where even the light of regret is disappearing. Another favourite is 'A Still Life', a still life on canvas is likened to a native land, being stared at, by hungry eyes, unable to escape the stillness within it's frame.

Poets I'm planning to look at in the future; Chuya Nakahara, Toshio Nakae's 'Time Within a Fish' (really would love to read this, is there already a translated edition?), you can sample some of his poems here, Kou Machida, a great place to sample more recent poems/poetry is at midnight press, Kiji Kutani's poems can also be read here.

Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude

Recently bought this, a little pocket edition, (although in Japan paperbacks are pocket size), of poetry by Shuntaro Tanikawa. 'Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude' first published in 1952, (it's been in print ever since), written between 1949-1951 and translated by William I.Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura, brought out by Shueisha Bunko . I think another collection of his sonnets has also been recently re-issued in an edition very much like this one. It also contains a small section of facsimiles of Shuntaro Tanikawa's original notebooks. This, so far, is one of the most rewarding book purchases I made this year, as stated in another post, Shuntaro Tanikawa has been the subject of speculation over the Nobel Prize, not really sure how true these speculations are, but reading through this collection, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

A theme that seems to me to be prominent in Tanikawa's poems, well in this collection, is the passing of time, some of the titles of the poems are the names of the seasons, and another re-occurring subject is the weather, mentions of the rainy season, downpours, cloudy days, quiet rainy nights, but mainly Tanikawa makes us consider time and how we perceive it, prompting us to question our interpretation of what 'now' actually means to us and to maybe re-evaluate our sense of our position in time, I think Tanikawa acknowledges that we are here for such a small fraction of time, but not for a moment considering it meaningless. The poems are in modern style, and still retain their modern feel, 'Impromptu Poems On The Desk' has an experimental feel, the poems are observational, non-judgemental, with a certain optimism to them, although many are tinged with sadness, as if the narrator has been abandoned/lost in time, but seeming not to fall into despair. Few of them mention God, in some the narrator will talk of just watching God, not believing, and others include prayer, but they don't have much of a religious tone to them,they do have a very humanistic sentiment. Others encapsulate a world whilst stirring a cream soda, the underlying theme most prominent is solitude, and most of these poems talk about solitude in a universal scale, but although they pinpoint to a certain moment, they also have a timeless quality to them, I think that's why their appeal is long lasting. He has a great way of tackling something like a sense of solitude or loneliness and address it in a way that everyone can relate to. I think the poem that stands out for me at the moment is one called 'Sadness' and the title poem, which I keep returning to at the moment, and 'The Surroundings' with it's billions of years in front and behind us.

In 1989 he won an American Book Award for his collection 'Floating the River in Melancholy' also translated by William I.Elliot and Kazuo Kawamura, which is out of print for the moment.

Some other available collections of his poetry-


A Chagall and a Tree Leaf - University of Hawaii Press
On Love - University of Hawaii Press
Giving People Poems - available at Small Press Distribution
Selected Poems - available at Carcanet Press