Japanese Poetry in Translation

I recently received in the mail a small, photocopied journal of poetry and poetics called Ekoshi Tsu¯shin, bearing the title, "Genius Poet Sagawa Chika Mini-Feature." Sagawa passed away in 1936 at the young age of 25, but not before writing and publishing over eighty poems and an armful of translations. Some people consider her to be the first female Japanese modernist (while many people do not know of there having been any); however it is only recently that she is being "mini-featured," receiving critical attention, and being read at all. While all of the others featured in this selection are from the postwar period, I have made an exception for this remarkable poet.

Because eighteen-year-old Sagawa arrived in Tokyo and was immediately embraced by some of its most prominent writers (including Nishiwaki Junzaburo¯ and Kitasono Katue), it is easy to lump her in with the Japanese modernists and surrealists. She certainly had much in common with them: a stark juxtaposition of images, the free-wheeling inclusion of foreign vocabulary and concepts, and a highly visual, colorful, tableau-like construction of poetry. But even among them her work is unique. In addition to the fantastical, surreal elements in her work, there is a palpable realism that wells up in each poem, a distinct stance on reality from which Sagawa produces a deeply furrowed cross-section of her world, where "cars and skirts cut the city into slivers of music." These slivers are carefully layered - and at the same time narrated - in the time and space of her poems. Instead of indulging in an arbitrary or abstract playfulness, Sagawa carries us through, and out of, each poem with an urgent force of sensation, in a poetry crouching on the brink of prose. All with such a deep sense of loss, for someone so young.

While traditional Japanese poetry displays a close association with nature, much of the work in this section does so in a distinctly non-traditional fashion. For Sagawa, who left her nature-lush Hokkaido (Japan’s northernmost island) for Tokyo, shards of nature wallop their way through her intimate and urban landscapes, while Park Kyong-Mi’s "Weather Patterns" from her newest book Sonoko (That Little One) explores human and otherwise external patterns of weather and weathering. Kawata Ayane, who comes from a family of tanka poets, puts a volatile and subversive spin on the short traditional forms of waka in her book Sora no Jikan (Time ofSky). Hiraide Takashi depicts a tension between nature (a walnut) and danger (of the Tokyo subway system). Like Sagawa, he embeds his own stance on reality inside a seemingly fantastical surface of modernist lyricism, but while Sagawa writes from a fixed point, Hiraide engages a shifting continuum between poetry and poetics - the poet himself aiming his postwar reality gun at all points in between, while pausing to joke with his neighbors now and then.

Within each of their various writing styles, Tomioka Taeko, Hirata Toshiko, Ito Hiromi, and Park Kyong-Mi inhabit a contemporary poetry that is colloquialized and feminine, though the work of Hirata and Ito can often reveal a connection to older Japanese roots. In Hirata’s "Nenbutsu, very busy," Nenbutsu is not only the name of a character but also the invocation Namu Amida Butsu, a prayer to the Buddha. In her writing in general, Hirata’s humorous and catchy turn of phrase captures the variations of spoken Japanese so well that it is not surprising she has taken to writing plays, some of which have been produced and published to award-winning acclaim in Tokyo.

Looking to the West, Tada Chimako’s writing reflects her deep interest in western religion, mythology, and philosophy, while Park gains strong influence from American writers such as Dickenson and Stein. Both Park and Tomioka are translators of Stein; Park at certain points hinges her rhythms on a Stein-y syntax and grammar.

Ito, as well as Yagawa Sumiko, are two poets who draw very fine lines between their personal lives and their work. Ito is well-known for her frankness on female physicality, while Yagawa’s "Etcetera Ode," published in 1980, is a precursor of the book she later wrote concerning her relationship with the novelist Shibusawa Tatsuhiko.

Though he is highly esteemed as a poet, Inagawa Masato’s work can at times harbor an ambiguous relationship to poetic discourse and poetry itself, and he is not alone. Like the burglars in Hirata’s "Career Counseling," Japanese poets have a variety of interests. They not only work in a tremendous range of poetic forms, but we also find amongst their works art films by Inagawa, sculptures by Kawata, criticism by Tada, advice columns by Ito, baseball poetics by Hiraide, and children’s books by Yagawa, for starters.

There are many people I would like to thank for their assistance and support: Iwabuchi Tatsuji and Nakayasu Atsuhiko for helping me on the Japanese end, Ben Basan and Sally Picciotto for reading the work in English, Sato Hiroaki for sending me his translations of female poets, and an enormous thanks to Eric Selland, who talked me through countless facets of Japanese literature and the translation thereof, via literally hundreds of e-mails. This section owes a lot to his encouragement, support, translations, and advice. Finally, I would like to thank the nea/us-Japan Friendship Commission for the Creative Artist Fellowship which gave me the time and resources to work on this project. There is much more Japanese poetry to translate, and the tip of an iceberg, one amidst many, is an exciting, albeit dangerous, place. Please stay tuned.

Sawako Nakayasu

note: The poems in this section are arranged roughly in order of publication date. The Japanese names are given last names first here and in Eric Selland’s essay; elsewhere we have it "Western-style." All translations are mine unless otherwise marked.