Exhibition of Kaita Murayama

A quick share of a post from Spoon &  Tamago, mainly for my own reference and perhaps your own interest, about a new exhibition of works by the artist and poet Kaita Murayama, which marks the centenary of his passing. Featuring previously unseen works.

Link here.

The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa

I crack an egg and the moon comes out

Reading the poems of Chika Sagawa reminds me in places of looking at the paintings of Hasegawa Rinjiro, finely translated by Sawako Nakayasu their narration has a certain stillness to them, perhaps this is the stillness of the moment of the observations they contain, and as they unfurl we have a sense that the barrier between the interpretation of the wider world with that of it's translation to the inner being evaporates within their confines. This collection, as well as including Sagawa's poems also include a number of her short prose pieces, some of these appeared in the magazines that Sagawa contributed to, the collection also includes brief poetry reviews, observations of fellow poets, all of which convey a lucid sense of intimacy and close proximity, reading these reviews provokes the wish to see an anthology of them appear in English, to read on, to expand the picture we have of Japanese modernism. Sagawa was born in rural Hokkaido in 1911 and died in 1936 after succumbing to stomach cancer at the age of just 24, the collection includes diary entries written in hospital whilst she was receiving treatment, the entry for October 23rd sees Sagawa note; was the first time in two weeks I was able to walk down the stairs to get to the X-ray room. Symptoms of her illness and a sense of the outlines of mortality can be felt in many of the preceding poems, notably in the poem Finale.

In her introduction Sawako Nakayasu highlights the importance of Sagawa as a female poet in what was a largely male dominated arena, observing that perhaps the only other comparable poet being Yosano Akiko, Sagawa, who is regarded as Japan's first female modernist poet, was championed by Ito Sei, Kitasono Katue, and eventual Nobel Prize nominee; Junzaburo Nishiwaki. Another notable Japanese name here is Hyyaken Uchida, whom Sagawa mentions reading, perhaps some stylistic similarities can be detected between the two, another is Soseki whom Sagawa observes his passing. Although containing traditional observations of the changing seasons, Sagawa's poems are noted for their inclusion and insertions of modernist descriptions and subtle surreality, subject and object often take turns in coming to the fore. As well as writing poetry, Sagawa herself translated the poetry of James Joyce, Charles Reznikoff and Mina Loy into Japanese. Whilst reading the poem Ancient Flowers with it's young girls collecting the lips of the waves with their fingertips, I'm reminded of Hasegawa's 1975 still life of the antique doll's head laid out on the table next to the sea shell and as our eye moves from object to object, relationships shift and the picture as a whole subtly transforms from the one we first encounter, this can also be felt perhaps in Sagawa's poetry, from line to line, word to word. In the piece On Bucolic Comedies by Edith Sitwell, Sagawa describes the occasion of it's translation into Japanese, (by Tsuneo Kitamura), as a truly wonderful event, much the same and more could be said about this remarkable and valued translation.
 

Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa at Canarium Books


excerpts at Asymptote 

Hasegawa Rinjiro at Kyuryudo Art Publishing Co Ltd 

Lizard Telepathy Fox Telepathy - Yoshinori Henguchi

A pleasing aspect of this book that caught my attention after receiving it was that weighing it in my hands it's proportions very much reminded me of the volumes produced by Katydid Books, most of which are now sadly slipping out of print and beyond, so to have a new translation of Japanese poetry is a welcome thing, here's to the making of a series. In the afterword, entitled Let's Talk About What We're Really Talking About from translator David Michael Ramirez II there is quite a bit made of the breaking of literary traditions and conventions in Henguchi's poetry, he describes the book's formation in detail with infectious enthusiasm, also hidden at the back of the book in slightly small text is a rather brief biography/chronology of Henguchi himself, perhaps this is how he wanted it, in which it's mentioned that he was published in Arechi/Wasteland, Henguchi's voice is a contemporary one.

The book comes in dual text and also the poems appear in differing fonts which subtly presents or recreates the effect perhaps of their dōjinshi origins, the book opens with the piece Nihongo a sprawling prose poem that spreads over four pages, (most of the poems in the book remain confined to a single page), in which Henguchi vents his frustrations with stilted language and how it's slidden into atrophy, and of this condition's affects in daily life, it's an impressive opening piece, after reading it I started to recall how perhaps older collections of poetry came with an index of first lines, with many of Henguchi's poems I envisioned the book being presented with an index of last lines as Nihongo culminates with - I would like to start a Nihongo that receives applause even in absolute darkness. After Nihongo there comes a selection of Henguchi's photography chaptered with the title For Dad, many of these shots are interior details, shots of the family home?, is that toilet plumbing in one?, another is a close up of tatami repaired or joined together with thick black carpentry tape, many are close ups reducing the image to elemental presences, we stare at the metallic foot grip of an escalator step, vivid green bamboo wall tiles, traditional imagery juxtaposed with that of the 'make do' present, a view through the waves in the glass of a window take on the perspective of looking down, a plane view out into the panoramic expanse of an ocean, in others we see perhaps the same image presented from a different angle or of the same face enlarging, getting closer and closer, the section ends with what could be a still of moving water, paused.

Reading the poems the reader might begin to look for common overarching themes, there's much reward in contemplating and comparing Henguchi's poetry as a whole as well as reading them one poem at a time, the narratives of Henguchi's poetry is one often caught between absolutes, either trying to escape them or alternatively forming new ones, or questioning where they might begin as in the prose poem; Framing the Freedom of Being Torn Apart which observes - Everything from start to finish is sure to be fiction. then posits the question - Where and when would you say is not fiction?, as with many of the poems there is the presence of unattainable realities, frustratingly some of these close at hand, desired or non-desired, the poem answers the question with the observation to the answer that lingers in the mind - In spite of that everybody is a damn creation, Henguchi's narratives are unflinching in their depictions of the vacuums between the fabric of realities imposed and unimposed, the struggle between the official and the unofficial is a theme not too distant in many of the poems and the precariousness of living and choosing between them, there's the challenging line - Realizing that the more sincere you become the more meaningless you become. Framing the Freedom of Being torn Apart is a poem made of clipped sentences, in ways it culminates in many places and times, the ending is a plea against maturing, but a little before the end a line laced with absolutism seems to arrive at a culmination before the poem's end - Everything, has an end in everything, Henguchi's voice blends visions of the darkest depths whilst still retaining in places indefatigable lines of resolve.



Truly no matter what happens it won't matter at all.

from Falling Slightly Forward       



Lizard Telepathy Fox Telepathy at Chin Music Press



      

Salad Anniversary

Pushkin continue to excel in breathing new life into older titles with Salad Anniversary by Tawara Machi, a poetry collection that was a phenomenal bestseller, notching up sells that went into the millions of copies when it was published back in the late1980's, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, Salad Anniversary was previously published in translation in an edition from Kodansha International, and has been given an attractive new jacket by artist Mio Matsumoto, (My Diary). Salad Anniversary contains fifteen poems in tanka style, many of which are concerned with the transitory nature of love, both attained, unattained and lost, that shift from the thematic to the literal. Tawara received the Kadokawa Tanaka Prize for her poem August Morning which is the books opening poem, the tone of the poems retain their freshness, although the tell tale mention on a number of occasions of the Southern All Stars, slightly displays and gives their age away, although this adds very much to the dimensions of the book and reflects the age of Tawara's poetry.

An aspect that prevails through the poems is a subtle sense of solitude, through the observations of relationships there are also many acute observations of the age which cast a glance to the generational gap between Tawara's generation with that of her father's, as in the short poem Morning Necktie, a tender portrait of her father with his half anxious criticism of her writing poetry, the poem remains not a harsh indictment but has an undeniable human, and in places tender quality to it, laced with a quiet humour, he sips his tea as if to say   "I'm not listening",  and observes how he continues to unhesitatingly call his wife mother, continuing the childhood domestic scene beyond it's need, the poem closes with forgiveness for her father's generation's  inability to express tenderness.   

The collection offers up many moments where Tawara's narratives are seeking to find their place in the bigger schemata of things or perhaps to realise their own form in relation to it and also in relation to the men that figure in the poems. In I Am the Wind, the narrator relates her relationship with a man who feels very much as being a political activist or with having political concerns, the poem observes the degrees of attention divided between her affections for him with that of his thoughts and relationship with his own political world view, these observations alternate throughout the poem as they study her thoughts of him, these at one point seem to congregate around a supposition of things seen through her contact lenses as she takes them out to clean them, the relationship teeters between existence and non-existence, diary entries kept blank filled in with pencil, the observations seem to plateau when the narrator visits a Van Gogh exhibition, stepping from picture to picture only to see her own image reflected in the glass in their frames. An added aspect that operates subtly in the background to the poems is that of the flowing of time, I Am the Wind starts with a letter written and of time beginning after the sticking of the stamp.  

The poem after this is Summertime Ship which relates a ferry trip to Shanghai, where things seen juxtapose the familiar with the unfamiliar, it too is a poem that is full of observations concerning the perceptions of the relationship between the narrator and the wider world. The poem takes in the sights and sounds of the visit, and ends with the narrator returning and setting off through the streets of Tokyo in the t-shirt worn which saw the Yangtze, the poem acts to document and witness the excursion. The title poem sees the narrative coming from a house wife whom it feels is in a marriage devoid of real love, a husband setting off for work, whilst carrying out domestic chores she dreams of Goa, the poem feels, as does most of the collection, to be tinged with the bitter sweetness of thwarted expectations, although they remain to question and reflect on standard demarcations of societal perceptions. Tawara's poems take their cue from first and last things, where the present day often or not acts as a spring board into reflections past and future, Pushkin Press have done a great job in making this landmark collection readily available again, Salad Anniversary is also accompanied with Juliet Winters Carpenter's afterword from 1989. Many thanks to Pushkin Press.     

Salad Anniversary at Pushkin Press

at Amazon                        

  

William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize 2013 - 2014

The 2013-2014 winner of the William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize has recently been announced through the Prize's website. The winning translation by Edith Sarra and Yasuko Ito Watt of - 3/11: Temporary Shelter by Takuya TANAKA is available to read via the site along with an introduction to the text and an afterword.

William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize 2013-2014

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

The Iceland - Sakutaro Hagiwara

 

 

Another title forthcoming, due in July as part of their Poetry Pamphlets Series, New Directions are publishing The Iceland by poet Sakutarō Hagiwara, 1886-1942, in a translation from Hiroaki Sato.

 

at amazon



The Kobe Hotel

 

   

Stuck somewhere between a desire to read either fiction or poetry The Kobe Hotel offers the opportunity to read both with the prose and haiku of Saitō Sanki, 西東三鬼, (1900-1962), who leaving his wife and child in Tokyo went to Kobe, the circumstances behind this course of action are revealed over the course of these stories. A dentist by profession on his arrival at the hotel on Tor Road in Kobe, which he describes as being an 'odd international hotel', he worked in a number of different occupations to get by, Sanki had previously lived in Singapore during the 1920's. The short prose sketches are full of his encounters and observations of the characters that drift through the hotel during his tenancy there, an interesting aspect to the tenants of the hotel is that of their metropolitan origins, especially as Sanki arrived in Kobe in 1942, at the height of the war, being too old he missed being drafted. The opening piece entitled The Story of the Strange Egyptian describes the character Maged Elba, one of only two Egyptians, he mentions, living in Japan at the time, although how Sanki is certain of this fact I'm not sure. Although described as stories they might pass as being labelled as chronicles, perhaps they are in actuality slightly embellished or polished tales of true events, the jacket also describes Sanki as a sexual adventurer and given his antipathy towards the military and authority, whilst reading these stories I was in places slightly reminded of Henry Miller, although they are devoid of Miller's fiery temper and perhaps the stories are told with a slightly more detached poetical eye. In the introduction Saito Masaya mentions that Sanki continued living his bohemian lifestyle in Kobe that he had begun in Singapore during the twenties. 

 

Originally published in periodicals, the stories evolve around certain fixed events of Sanki's life, his relocation to Kobe and meeting Namiko, a woman who becomes his partner, the eventual fire bombing of the hotel and of his renting and leasing a Western style Meiji era house set in the hills overlooking Kobe Bay. Another reoccurring presence throughout the stories is that of the German naval serviceman who due to increasing blockades are forced to anchor in the harbour, Sanki points out that due to the metropolitan nature of the city, the presence of spies and surveillance personnel were common in the city at the time, there is mention of the notorious spy Richard Sorge. Amongst these portraits and character histories, Sanki discusses his connections and involvement in creating various haiku groups, (Gendai Haiku), and poets from his past, who occasionally pay visit to him in Kobe, he was forbidden to write haiku for a number of years, only resuming again at the wars end. Among telling these stories he briefly describes his involvement in what he refers to as the Kyoto University Haiku incident of 1940 and laments the intellectual repression during the years of increased militarization. The stories continue up to a time period slightly after the war, observing Hiroshima and in the piece Like A Rolling Stone describes being commandeered in the building of a brothel for servicemen of the occupying forces. Eventually Sanki had to move on from his rented house after it was bought by a Chinese landlord, and he describes his re-entry into the world of poetry, struggling to get by editing various magazines and journals. Interestingly, in a slightly strange coincidence there's also a brief appearance here by a Mr Kotani who also features as a character in Inoue's Bullfight, in the character of Okabe.

Along with these autobiographical based pieces there is a varied selection of Sanki's haiku included, selected from the four collections of haiku he produced. Sanki's haikus are filled with scenes of the poverty and despair endured and experienced immediately after the war. Saito was born Keichoku Saito in Tsuyama in Okayama Prefecture, along with The Kobe Hotel he produced four collections of haiku - Flag, 1939, Peaches At Night, 1948, Today, 1952 and Metamorphosis in 1962. The incident in Kyoto that Sanki was involved in was also known as the Satoda Incident after which he was imprisoned, whilst in Kobe he remained under surveillance by the military police, until moving back to Tokyo in 1956. Sanki passed away in 1962 after suffering from stomach cancer, Tsuyama City created a prize in his name.


Let me store it
in myself, a mountainful
of cicadas screeching.

from - Kyo/Today


Translated by Saito Masaya published by Weatherhill, but now out of print.

Works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese Text)
   

Interview with Mutsuo Takahashi via REVS magazine.

A recent brief interview uploaded last month with poet Mutsuo Takahashi/高橋 睦郎 is available to read via REVS magazine, which also includes translations of two of his poems - Traveling Blood and Monkey-Eaters.

REVS magazine.

Kobayashi Issa - Oraga Haru/The Year of My Life

15.06.2013 marked the 250th birthday of Kobayashi Issa, although I wanted to mark the day by posting on the actual day, the opportunity passed me by in the blink of an eye.

Kobayashi Issa's Oraga Haru - The Year of My Life in a translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa, (translator of the Penguin edition of Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches), is available to read in streaming format over at the out of print titles page at University of California Press.

Kujikenaide/Don't Lose Heart to be published by Pighog Press

News recently out that Kujikenaide/ Don't Lose Heart by Toyo Shibata, the inspirational collection and phenomenally best selling poetry collection, (1.6 million copies sold), is set to be published in an English language U.K edition by the very excellent Brighton based publisher Pighog Press in Autumn 2013, in a translation by Maya Nakamura, the book was published originally in Japan by Asuka shinsha Publishing.

From the press release of Pighog Press -

"Pighog Press is to publish the first English language edition of Toyo Shibata's best selling poetry collection in Autumn 2013. Kujikenaide - 'Don't Lose Heart' by Toyo Shibata has been described as a Japanese phenomenon and has received worldwide attention. The inspirational collection has sold 1.6 million copies since it's initial publication in 2009.

 

 The first English Language collection of Shibata's poetry beautifully speaks of age, the hardships and joys of longevity and the relationship that that helped her through a century-long life. The collection encourages readers to love and enjoy every aspect of time and to share it with the people who matter most.

 

 Shibata began writing poetry at the age of 92 when back pain forced her to give up her hobby of traditional Japanese dance, which she had been practicing for decades. Since Shibata's passing in January 2013 at age 101, she has received worldwide appreciation for her beautiful poetry. Each poem in her collection discusses life intimately with a crystalized perception of family and the race of time we all must endure. Writing in a traditional Japanese poetic style of simplicity and truth, Shibata's best selling collection speaks of honesty with an abundance of strength."

 

 

Pighog Press

 

Asuka shisha Publishing

 

 

more information on Toyo Shibata at the Guardian and The Independent

 

 

 

     

The Poetry of Living Japan

A recent purchase in a nearby second hand bookshop - The New Poetry, selected and introduced by A. Alvarez, published by Penguin which I've only just begun to explore, simply divided into two halves, one a selection from American poets, the other from British poets. Among the British is included D. J Enright, who I couldn't help notice that in the 1950's was a visiting professor to Konan University in Kobe. A little further probing uncovered that he along with Takamichi Ninomiya edited and introduced a selection of Japanese poetry entitled The Poetry of Living Japan published back in 1958. It features poems from a wide range of poets including - Tōson Shimazaki, Sakutarō Hagiwara, Tatsuji Miyoshi, Shinkichi Takahashi, Michizō Tachihara, to name but a few here, and also that it's available to read via Archive.org.

Also over at the very excellent publicdomainreview.org an interesting selection of Sketches by Yoshitoshi and also a look at the texts featured in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald.

The Poetry of Living Japan at Archive.org.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An unexpected read, not having read Matsuo Bashō previously this translation which was first published in 1966 by Nobuyuki Yuasa seems like a good place to start, it's accompanied by an introduction that spans a little over forty pages, although quite lengthy and detailed it feels that this remains only a glimpse into Bashō and the Japan of his age, it offers a brief history of Bashō's beginnings and the steps leading up to his travels, as well as contextualizing him with the poets that influenced him, along with the introduction there are an additional twenty pages of very informative notes at the end of the book which are a good spur to delve further into the times of Bashō, the early Edo or Tokugawa period. Within the introduction Yuasa observes that in Oku no Hosomichi, "Bashō has mastered the art of writing haibun so completely that prose and haiku illuminate each other like two mirrors held up facing each other. This is something no one before him was able to achieve, and for this reason, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is counted as one of the classics of Japanese Literature", if you're coming to   Bashō for the first time, like myself, an observation like this gives a clear indication of it's magnitude, and there is much about Bashō that I've yet to learn, to take things further Haruo Shirane's - Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of  Bashō could make an informative next read.

 

This collection presents five pieces of haibun, (prose and poetry), the last being Oku no Hosomichi and also maps of the routes   Bashō took that produced them. Reading these sketches you can begin to find yourself amongst a set of  various differing elements, initially the juxtaposition of the pacing of the prose with that of the haiku, in a quote from Bashō he observes the difference between himself and other writers who include in their poems solely objects they encounter in their surroundings, or topographically observations, his poems appear to have a more singularity of vision, derived from experience on the road, things seen that has moved him. In Bashō it can be felt quite prominently that all is in flux, for him everything must have been in a state of near or continual change, not only things in his immediate field of vision, but also the larger picture of the changing of the seasons. Some of the haiku included are from companions that joined him on his travels as well as those of people who he lodged with, friends and family, fellow poets and priests living an ascetic existence, turning the back to the material life, one that Bashō also practised.

Although the Oku no Hosomichi seems to end quite abruptly the reader is faced with contemplating the pacing of the piece and also with the thought that the translation into English, (or maybe any other language outside of Japan), will never capture the lyrical nature of the original, you begin to think back on the sights and events that have been described by  Bashō, and to perhaps contemplate on which of them might have held the heaviest gravitational pull, perhaps the difficulty in such an endeavour points to a more profound quality to the piece. The aspect that marvels the most in Bashō is that in everything there is an awareness of his antithetical nature, the renunciation of conventional thinking, as the piece proceeds it's easy to put to the back of the mind the distances he is covering, until he mentions that the distance to Kaga Province, 加賀国,,,,,, (modern day Ishikawa Prefecture), is a little over a hundred miles, you begin to turn again to the maps to reassess the lengths of his journey. There are a number of moments where the tug of the antithetical can be felt where on one occasion even a spot of moon viewing will fail to pull him out of a state of melancholy, and in another haiku, -


Bathed in such comfort,
In the balmy spring of Yamanaka,
I can do without plucking,
Life-preserving chrysanthemums.


Riddles within riddles in Bashō's haiku, in its abrupt ending another quality becomes apparent that although the journey is a spiritual one Bashō doesn't finish on a culminating summary of his walk, these remain in the haiku, the fleeting moments of his visions.



The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches at Penguin Books         

In Mourning for the Summer by Tachihara Michizō

Reading through some of the blogs that I follow and other places on the net, I couldn't help but notice that April is national poetry month, I'd have to admit that I've not looked very thoroughly into this, I was going to but then I remembered reading Simon Armitage, in his book All Points North, that on the occasion of national poetry day the first thing he did was leave the country and take his mother shopping in Reykjavik, I think it was - I read it many years ago, like him I usually find myself being slightly suspicious of national or international events like these. To know that somewhere April has been deemed to be poetry month is enough for me, but here is a poem that I've been thinking about quite a lot recently - In Mourning for the Summer by  Michizō Tachihara , 立原道造, , a collection of his poetry has appeared in English translation in Of Dawn, Of Dusk - The Poetry of   Michizō Tachihara, translated by Robert Epp and Iida Gakuji, published by Yakusha in 2001, I suppose you'd be fortunate if you find an affordable copy.

At the beginning of last month I couldn't help read this poem, although some of it's meanings derive from other times and aspects of it reference different events, I couldn't help from feeling that in parts it felt poignantly relevant. This poem can be found in the anthology From the Country of Eight Islands translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson.   





In Mourning for the Summer

My times that passed away
have turned my heart to gold. So as not to be wounded, so wounds
        may be cured soon,
between yesterday and tomorrow
a deep indigo gulf has been made.

What I tossed away
was a small piece of paper stained with tears.
Amid foamy white waves, one evening,
all, everything, vanished! Following the story line

then I became a traveller and passed many
villages on the moonlit capes, many
hot, dry fields.

If I could remember! I'd like to return once again.
Where? To that place (I have a memory of,
that I waited for and quietly gave up -)





Michizō Tachihara at Ginza via Wikkicommons

101 Modern Japanese Poems

Another title selected from the lists of the JLPP from Anthem Press is this welcome and wide ranging  anthology of modern Japanese poems originally compiled and prefaced by Makoto Ōoka back in 1998 under the title Gendaishi no kansho 101, translated by Paul McCarthy, it features the poetry of 55 different poets all born within the last century, the selection is introduced by Chuei Yagi, which traces the beginnings of modern Japanese poetry. These poems are all in the form of prose poetry, and are selected from over a period of six decades, the earliest being Toyoichirō Miyoshi's, Prisoner, from 1949 and the most recent is Shuntaro Tanikawa's,  Mt Yokei, from 1993. The decades that are the most well represented here are poems from the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, within these periods there are selections from poets you would expect to see rep-resented; Shuntarō Tanikawa, Ryūichi Tamura, Minoru Yoshioka, Gōzō Yoshimasu, to name a few amongst the many, some of these poems are familiar landmarks; Minoru Yoshioka's Monks, and Shuntarō Tanikawa's Sorrow from his seminal collection, Two Billion Light Years of Loneliness, Tamura's Sinking Temple from Four Thousand Days and Nights, some of these poems have appeared in English translation in previous anthologies and by various translators but this goes some way to show how integral these poems and poets are in the landscape of post war and latter half twentieth century Japanese poetry. There are many poems and poets appearing here for the first time in translation and on an initial reading they could number in being too numerous to list individually here.

The anthology comes with an informing source section at the back, and the poems are presented along with the date in which they appeared in the original which goes some way in assisting to visualize the poems, although this it could be said, depending on the poems subject or concerns, is more relevant in some of the poems than in others, and it brings the added opportunity of an extended contextualization of the poems. In Hitoshi Anzai's Elevator Mornings, (1961), the internal and external are juxtaposed, the narrator's inner observations of a love affair meeting with that of the external world, the office building he works at, his political allegiances, but as the poem ends, he seems to escape from us - And then go shooting up by elevator, To an awfully busy place, without women. Reading these lines we can't help but picture to ourselves the place he is exiting into. The quote by Taka' aki Yoshimoto, (two of his poems are featured in this anthology), in Chuei Yagi's introduction contrasting the shifting types of rhetoric in poetry is something fully displayed and can be read across these fascinating  poems. Themes and subject matters are as varied as there are poets and forms of expression, from the darkly exploratory and psychologically taut portrait of A Crystal Madness by Takasuke Shibusawa, (which reminded me of the fictions of Yutaka Haniya, has won many awards including - the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize, Takami Jun Prize), to the more subtle and playful but provoking quickness of, Shimiji Clams, of Rin Ishigaki, which will remain to catch the sharpest of reader out. When reading anthologies it's tempting to look for glimpses of any unifying elements but the array of different and varied voices that can be heard here refreshingly defy this approach.

It's interesting to note the lower number of selections of poems from the eighties and the nineties, whether this illustrates a decline in published poetry at the end of the last century I'm not too sure. Amongst the poems featured from this period is Tada Chimako's, First Dream of the New Year, where a dream is described of peeling a tangerine and of being pulled inside by the hand of an elderly man, once inside the narrator describes the cosy interior, and picks another tangerine only to find another hand emerge pulling her inside, the narrator awakes observing ~ My body was steeped in the scent of dazzling gold, this poem is a perfect allegorical portrait of being pulled through the years and illustrates the brevity of memory and the parting observation of the rejuvenative power of a new year, the poem is from Tada's collection from 1986 Bonfire Festival. This expansive anthology is essential and rewarding reading to all those interested in modern Japanese poetry.        

101 Modern Japanese Poems at Anthem Press

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.  

   

The Unsung Masters Series: Tamura Ryuichi

A book I've been eager to read is Tamura Ryuichi: On the Life and Work of a 20th Century Master, recently published by Pleiades Press the volume collects together previous translations of Tamura's poems by Christopher Drake, which originally appeared in Dead Languages, alongside translations of those by co-editor Takako Lento and also by  Marianne Tarcov. Wayne Miller is the series editor of Pleiades Press's Unsung Masters Series, who also gives an introduction in which he describes his first readings of Tamura's poetry, (an event that lingers in the mind of any reader's first encounter with his poetry), and also gives an account of how the book came into being, noting com-parisons between Tamura's poetry with that of Tadeusz Rosewicz and Paul Celan. The selected poems here are on the whole ones that have been well anthologised,  although to have them collected and available in this book which serves as both  a hugely informative introduction as well as of a more detailed examination is definitely a welcome event.

The poems are also accompanied with a  selection of enlightening  essays both critical and reflective by contemporary poets of Tamura's and also by his translators - Ooka Makoto, Ayukawa Nobuo, Yoshimasu Gozo, Christopher Drake, (whose introduction to Dead Languages is reproduced here), Miho Nonaka, Mariane Tarcov, Laurence Lieberman and Tanikawa Shuntaro, who's essay interestingly  takes the form of Tanikawa interviewing  himself in a Q and A style session about his thoughts on Tamura. The book also contains a selection of photographs of Tamura, the cover photo portrait is included here in full with Tamura at the launch of Four Thousand Days and Nights, seated next to fellow Arechi poets Ayukawa Nobuo and Yoshimoto Takaaki. Ayukawa Nobuo's essay, A Journey to Fear, is from the time of the publication of Four Thousand Days and Nights, I get the impression it could of come from a preface to the collection or perhaps from a review. In it Ayukawa charts Tamura's life as a poet, his mapless journey, (the name of a piece from Tamura), and examines Tamura's poetry, especially looking in detail at the two poems Four Thousand Days and Nights and Standing Coffin.

In his introduction Wayne Miller points out that the Four Thousand Days and Nights was very nearly the exact period between the surrendering of Japan to that of the poem's completion. Ayukawa Nobuo's essay goes on to explore the notions of being labelled a post-war poet, and compares the differences between the poetry of some of the pre-war poets to that of the post-war era. Laurence Lieberman's piece reflects back on meeting Tamura and on the time when Lieberman first lived in Japan. Gozo Yoshimasu's piece here is entitled Exceptional Poet: Tamura Ryuichi, the main portion of his piece Yoshimasu explains is taken from his introduction to the Japanese edition of Tamura Ryuichi's Complete Works, which has recently been published in Japan. One of the many referential points in Yoshimasu's essay is from the closing lines of a poem by Hu Shi called Dream and Poetry, Gozo Yoshimasu goes on to weave connections between the poem, Tamura, and also that of a haiku of Basho, Exceptional Poet comes to us as a finely flowing and cohesive mixture of part reflection and of projected observations with added parentheses,  retracing and drawing on memories and recollections of Tamura in Iowa. Taking in along it's way the essay looks at Tamura's poem On My Way Home, (included here), a poem originally from the collection World Without Worlds. Takako Lento's piece, Poet As Metaphor again recalls memories of Tamura and also discusses translating Tamura, all of the essays here offer acute insights into a unique master of words .   

Tamura Ryuichi: On the Life of a 20th Century Master at Pleiades Press

My post on Dead Languages

Forest of Eyes by Tada Chimako

 

Forest of Eyes recently published by University of California Press won Jeffrey Angles the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, awarded from the Donald Keene Center, these poems have been selected from works that span from 1956 through to 2005, some from posthumous collections compiled by Tada's friend and fellow poet Takahashi Mutsuo after Tada's death in 2003, Jeffrey Angles has presented us with a fantastically translated selection, accompanied by an introduction on Tada's life and also detailed explanatory notes illuminating nuances in the translation process that may not be apparent in the finished English texts, and also adding a comprehensive bibliography of both original works of Tada's that appeared in Japan, and also details of previous English translations of her poetry.

Tada's poetry is full of transformations, where acute observations of events and things that appear in the everyday are reshaped, touched by her readings of Chinese and Greek classics they have a mythic quality to them that could be said to border somewhere between surrealism and magical realism. Settling into her married life in Kobe away from the literary scene of Tokyo, there's a slight sense of isolation and loneliness to some of the poems, in the title poem The Town of Mirrors, or Forest of Eyes, (1968), Tada gives us a portrait of a desolate existence tinged with surrealistic imagery, a life which seems to be entwined with the uncontrolled force of nature, This is my town, the town of my eyes, The people planted alongside the walls, Grow tender tendrils of age beneath the ground. Tada's poetry has something of the visionary, but stem from the experiences and places of the everyday, a visit from a mysterious cat is subtlety turned to questioned how we perceive the possible and by turns the impossible, and again in Horrors of the Kitchen, (1980), where the chef performs his ritualistic duties beneath a knife perceived as the dangling sword of Damocles. The selection includes short prose pieces to longer pieces, also including selections from Tada's tanka, appearing in both English and Japanese texts. A prose piece from Tada's collection, Along the Riverbank from 1998 called Chewing on a Eucalyptus Leaf again takes on surrealistic dimensions, where the narrative maps out an existence lived out amongst an Eucalyptus plant. From the same collection is the poem called Labyrinth, which at times brought slightly to mind the world of Kobo Abe perhaps with it's hint at a hospital setting.

Was I in a huge hospital?

As I dissociated the joints of language

I distorted meaning,left and left again

I clung to bandages unfurling through great white margins

Or to spools of string that someone had given me

There are many juxtapositions of myth and folklore to contemplate within this exceptional collection that will continue to enrich after many re-readings.

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'.

New Writing in Japan

The early 1970's saw Penguin Books publish the New Writing in...series, which devoted a volume of prose and poetry of each country it covered, the cover of the Japan edition features a detail from a painting by Kawabata Ryushi, and was edited by Geoffrey Bownas and Yukio Mishima, in Geoffrey Bownas's translator's preface, the shock of Mishima's suicide of some months previously is felt, Bownas recalls the last time he met Mishima and looks back at the last movements of the author's life . The collection contains many of the big names from Japanese literature and also some that are not so recognised outside of Japan, many of the translations are by Geoffrey Bownas, although other translator's pieces are featured. Mishima's story Patriotism is included, which has recently been republished by New Directions. The Catch by Oe Kenzaburo is included here, translated by John Bester, the story also featured in the anthology in The Catch and Other War Stories. The Cosmic Mirror is a short story by Haniya Yutaka, Haniya was born in Taiwan in 1910 and was imprisoned during the war due to his political leanings, the story is set in the realm of sleep and dream, here the protagonist has learned the skill of controlling his movements within his dream. As he progresses within his dream we follow him as he makes his way to a room in a cellar, which is at the bottom of a very long and dark staircase. In the room hangs a mirror that has a strange light to it, the character tells us that since he was young he had come to regard mirrors as the 'tool of the devil' , and that they offered glimpses into other worlds, night after night he returns to the room staring into the mirror. One night he stares very closely, putting his eyes up close to the mirror, and cupping his hands to block the light from within the room, he stares again, concentrating his vision on the blackness of the pupils of his eyes, he begins to see movement.

Yoshiyuki Junnosuke's story included here is Sudden Shower/Shu-u(1954),which won the Akutagawa Prize, it tells the relationship of Hideo Yamamura who works in an office on board a steam ship, and that of the prostitute he visits, Michiko. After visiting her a number of times Hideo realizes that he has feelings of jealousy when he contemplates her being with her other customers. Together they visit a fortune teller who foresees that Michiko will succeed in her life, recently she has been contemplating leaving her profession and maybe opening a flower shop. Hideo has to travel away to a colleague's wedding, whilst away Hideo finds it harder and harder to keep Michiko out of his thoughts, after seeing what he believes was a look of relief on her face when she discovered that he's actually single and not married. When he returns from the wedding, his jealousy seems to be at breaking point, when he's told that he has to wait before he can see her as she's with a customer. Junnosuke's prose is taught in capturing Hideo's confusion at trying to decipher if her feelings for him are real, or just a tool being used to keep him returning. Kobo Abe's Stick and Red Cocoon, two well anthologised stories, also in the prose segment of the book stories from Ishihara Shintaro and Yasuoka Shotaro. Inagaki Taruho is a writer I've been looking forward to explore, whose book One Thousand and One Second Stories is soon to be reissued, the piece included here is Icarus.

The poetry that Mishima and Bownas chose comes from the poets, Tanikawa Shuntaro, Tsuji Takashi, Yoshioka Minoru, Anzai Hitoshi, Tamura Ryuichi, Shiraishi Kazuko, Takahashi Mutsuo, tanka from Tsukamoto Kumio and Mizushima Hatsu's modern haiku. Most of these I've got to know through this collection, Shiraishi Kazuko has recently had a collection published by New Directions, My Floating Mother,City. Takahasi Mutsuo has six poems included here, some taken from his un-translated collection, Rose Tree, End of Summer, a dark poem about obsessive love. This is quite a unique little anthology for a number of reasons, which is sadly out of print at the moment.