Part I
Invited to give the keynote talk to the Nihon Kajin
Club (The
Japan Tanka Poets’ Club), publisher of Atsuo Nakgawa’s The Tanka in
English: In Pursuit of World Tanka in Nagoya a few years ago, I read a
number of my own translations as well as some of my original tanka. I
also read the following original English language choka,
(long song). The choka, containing alternating syllables of 5,7,5,7,7, was a form
of ancient Japanese poetry that was popular in 8th century Japan.
I had recently returned to Japan after living for a number of years
in Ohio. It did feel a bit like I had
returned home, but I was really
talking about poetry:
The Prodigal Son
It’s a title I deserve
for wanting to leave,
to live in a far--off land
wasting my substance
on riotous poetry,
reading to guitars
and chanting to all that jazz
while letting others
till the fields in Yamato.
With my head hung low
I’m quite glad to have come home
(pass the fatted calf . . .)
I again count syllables
and walk Shikishima’s path.
Let me say more about the form and meaning of the poem.
"Shikishima" is both a place name and an
alternative name for Yamato or
ancient Japan. "Shikishima
no michi" refers to the "Way of
Poetry" in
the Japanese past. Or more specifically, tanka.
The term "waka" was
also used to describe the 31 syllable tanka, but back
in the time of the
Manyoshu, it included other forms including the choka, a longer poem of
alternating 5,7,5 syllable lines that ended in a 7,7 couplet. So we can
see that the tanka, the favorite poetry form of the
Japanese aristocracy
for 1300 years, is the shortest possible choka, and
thus the name
"tanka" or "short song." Back in
the old days, it seems that there was no
distinction between poems that were sung or chanted, and songs that were
written down as poetry. The word "uta" is
written with the same
character as the "ka" in "tanka"
and still means both "ancient poetry" and
"song."
The original verse above is a summary of sorts of my own treading
along the ancient path of Japanese poetry. Let me share with the readers
of Simply Haiku a memoir of my own,
over 50 years of stumbling along
that ancient path. I have recently retired from teaching Japanese
language and literature at Antioch College and as I move my books from
office to home shelves I see several collections I have translated that
are still in print-- Ten Thousand Leaves:
Love Poems form the Manyoshu,
Waka Poetry of the Emperor Meiji, Waka Poetry of the Empress Shoken,
Map
of Days by the contemporary poet Tanikawa Shuntaro, and a few others,
including The Selected Poems of Shuntaro Tanikawa, only found
now, I
suspect, in the dusty backrooms of used books stores both here and in
Japan.
My involvement with the poetry of Japan has been much like a journey in an
unknown woods, an enchanted forest to be sure, with unmarked trails and
paths that lead both to majestic heights and to nowhere at all. Tanka
and other short imagistic Japanese verse has attracted
me for over
fifty years. My first love of Japanese poetry came with the discovery
of the tanka of the 8th century Manyoshu
in 1952, but there is more of
this story than just finding a good book. The poetry of Japan has
defined much of my life and livelihood. Let me begin the tale early.
Growing up in an Appalachian family near Dayton, Ohio, I graduated high
school in 1949. I joined the Navy "to see the world" and was assigned
to the duties of a Sea Bee surveyor in Iwakuni, Japan. I was there from
the fall of 1952 to the spring of 1955. My first duty was making a map
of that old Japanese Naval Base being taken over by the U.S. Navy. But
my real interest was exploring the exotic towns and villages outside
the gate. I loved hiking and climbing old hills to look for castle
ruins and the like. I was a bit of a romantic and even (secretly)
enjoyed poetry in High School. I had even (secretly) jotted down a few
lines of doggerel myself as I trekked along the mountain trails of Japan.
One day the thought came to me as I hiked the hills, "I wonder what kind
of poetry the Japanese write?" I had not even
heard of haiku or tanka!
I was learning to speak Japanese a little on my own, so I looked up
the words for "poetry" in a pocket dictionary. I was given the word
"shi," and then passing an old bookstore
across the street from the
train station, I dropped in and surprised an old man by asking if
they had a book about "Nihon no shi.." Now the word "shi"
can
mean "history" and even "death" as well as both Chinese and
Western
type of "poetry." It was not the last time over the years that old
Japanese bookstore owners have been confused by my search. Once he
realized that I was not intent on studying the history of dying, nor did I
even read Japanese, he rummaged through his shelves and dusted off a
real old book and handed it to me. I could see in English translation
even some short phrases that indicated to me that the writing was not
prose! I paid the reasonable price and went out to a riverbank or
someplace to read the Lacquer Box by
someone named Shoson Yasuda.
One of my favorite tanka at the time was Yamabe no Akahito’s
Harun no nu ni
sumire tuminito
koshi ware zo
nu wo natuskashimi
hitoyo neni keru
Or in Yasuda’s translation:
I am he indeed
come to gather violets
from the spring’s fair mead;
And I slept there through the night
so enchanted by their sight.
Well, over the years, especially after I leaned to read classical
Japanese, I have become a little more critical of Japanese poetry
translations, but those poems still excite in me the feeling of a
romantic youth exploring mountain paths in the exotic land of Japan. A
more recent translation of my own goes:
To these fields of spring
I came to pick violets,
Yes, I am the one!
Having longed so for this place
I just slept here all night long.
I have written elsewhere that I even began to write imitation tanka and my
first was to a girl named Kimiko, a seamstress in
town. I don’t
think she could appreciate a poem to her in English, or, for a matter of
fact, even from me very much! My first English language tanka,
composed
in 1952, maybe 1953, goes:
Warm breeze that I breathe
that drifts from yonder mountains
in whose shade you dwell
Has been sweetened, I believe,
by blowing through your hair.
These early experiences with Japanese poetry motivated me to go to college
after my discharge, and study Japanese language and literature seriously.
After leaving the Navy in 1955, I returned immediately to Japan by
freighter. It was my plan at that time to become a writer "like
Lafcadio Hearn," and live in Japan forever. Maybe I could even go to
college in Japan. But I lived for nearly a half year
in a very cheap
rent area of Osaka (actually the slums). I now chuckle at myself for
ending up in Osaka in the 50s. Much later, I learned that some of “the
best minds of my generation” had been gathering in Kyoto where they were
involved with Zen meditation and other noble pursuits. Oh well, it was
not easy for me to sit still for very long at all, and I did learn a few
Osaka drinking songs.
I continued to write tanka in English and even
eventually found
publication in such international collections as Tuttle’s Japan: Theme
and Variations, A Collection of Poems by
Americans, with poems such as:
On the Tea Ceremony
I was to your left
as you passed the bowl of tea
for me to drink
Purposely I turned it round
to where your lips had touched.
Or:
On a Withered Bonsai
Dried brown pine tree
dead months ago from drought
and scorching sun
Why do I, starting now,
water you every day?
Also, living in a bombed out area of Osaka, and interacting with many
of the post-war homeless, I began to write such free form poems as:
Coins
How loud is the tinkling of coins,
two coins even
copper coins even
That jingle in the pocket of a man
that is passing
with two coins passing
A woman sits on a closed store’s steps
begging the passing people
beseeching the passing people
While a child clings to a milkless breast
sleeping and hungry
dreaming it is not hungry
As it too listens to the clinking of coins
of the man’s passing
and the people’s passing.
On a trip to Hiroshima, I was struck by the fact that the
city was being
rebuilt, but it took much longer for the trees to grow. Hiroshima in
the early and mid 50s, was a bright sunny city. I wrote:
Hiroshima
Hiroshima was destroyed in seconds
It took longer for the people to die.
and all of them didn’t.
Some crawled up from the cool rivers
To build and to love . . .
They reconstructed a city upon ashes
and built playgrounds for their children
But they are not joyful.
They sit on sun soaked benches in shadeless parks
And weep
For it takes years for a tree to grow
And their children are unable to play.
I soon found, however, that it was no simple matter to go off and just
live in Japan forever. The government was quite
serious about visas for
civilians, and I learned that I was going to be required to leave the
country and change my visa if I were to either work or go to school in
Japan. I was in a double bind. I was running out of money
and I needed
a job or to get enrolled in a school and start my G.I. Bill of Rights
checks! Well, perhaps, I thought it was time for me to go to college
somewhere other than Japan. An exchange of letters told me
that I would
be accepted at the University of Hawaii. My tuition would be $90 a
semester. I could afford that anyway. It was before statehood. With
much regret, I decided to catch a passenger ship to Honolulu. My berth was
a bunk bed in a cargo hatch with a group of migrant workers from the
Philippines. I arrived in Hawaii in January of 1956.
I studied the Japanese language, and even classical Japanese, on the
GI Bill of Rights, at the University of Hawaii. I remained in Honolulu
through the rest of the 50s. I had a part-time job as a bag boy in a
Japanese supermarket for several years. I think the owners found it
funny that a red-headed haole boy like me could speak
Japanese with the
old ladies from Japan, as I carried their sacks of rice
to the car.
While at UH, I began translating both classical and more contemporary
Japanese poetry. I also remember writing a lot of original poetry both
free verse and in the tanka form. I recall winning a
state-wide
creative writing contest for a collection of my English tanka.
I also
wrote plays and prose. During the late 50s I became aware of the Beat
writers in San Francisco and remember having regrets that I
had not
continued my transpacific journey as far as California. Had I not
gotten off the President Cleveland in Honolulu in January 1956, to attend
the University of Hawaii, I could also have been reading
poetry in
Berkeley! Oh well, the Path of Shikishima is a long and winding road.
And there are no maps!
After staying at the University of Hawaii from 1956-59, and again for
another year to earn an MA degree, I applied for a Ford Foundation Grant to
return to Japan to translate Japanese poetry. The
reply was negative,
but I was offered the opportunity to study Japanese anywhere in the US.
I chose Columbia because of the famed translator of Japanese, Donald
Keene. I wanted to learn translation methods from the renowned scholar. I
arrived in New York in the fall of 1960. I remained at Columbia for two
years. New York in the early 60’s was a heady place to be. The streets
were full of "flower children" and poetry was all over.
Many of the San Francisco beats were coming to NY after being
arrested or run out of North Beach. I myself stopped in San Francisco
briefly on my way from Honolulu to look up some contacts I had made
at
City Lights. I was told by the police, I had 24 hours to be out of town!
My beard seemed to be communicating more than I intended. Saying I was
a poet didn't seem to help! I gladly moved on to New York.
On Manhattan, I became more and more involved
with some of the poetry
scenes at the time, but I tried hard to concentrate on my graduate work
in Japanese at Columbia. The focus of my study was always
poetry;
sometimes old, sometimes contemporary, sometimes my own.
I even translated some tanka poems from the Kojiki and other early
works for a language class with Donald Keene, and in
papers for my
Tale of Genji
class at Columbia with Ivan Morris.
The following is an exchange of poems, in translation, from the
“Ukifune” section of the Tale of Genji. Ukifune
is doubting the
sincerity of her lover, Niou:
Though we have promised
to be in love forever
there is still sadness. . .
Since even in these lives of ours
mere tomorrow is unknown. Niou
Over human hearts
I would not be grieving
if I could just feel
In this fickle world of ours
it’s life alone that is unknown. Ukifune
On taking his departure, Niou writes:
Before I depart
for a bewildering world
I’m already lost,
Tears that form to fill my eyes
now haze out the path I’ll take. Niou
Since my narrow sleeves
cannot even halt flow
of my own tears,
How is it possible for them
to impede you leaving? Ukifune
But paths both in woods and life, as well as in poetry are not always
straight. I actually turned a cold shoulder to Japanese short
traditional poetry, as an academic pursuit, for a number of years,
although I did translate a group of tanka or a
sprinkling of haiku for
term papers and the like along the way in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Even in Hawaii, I had begun to win prizes and publish my own writings in
terms of longer poetry, fiction, and even playwriting. In Greenwich
Village, I
continued my interest in writing, in poetry readings, even to
jazz, and seriously began to wonder if I wanted to live an academic life
at all. Being an expatriate poet in Tokyo or living on a houseboat
in the Inland Sea seemed to me at the time to be a little more daring,
maybe even real, than being cooped up in a college library. Still I
was becoming more and more interested in the modern poetry of Japan.
---------------
Part II. The Modern Poets and Poetry of Emperors. Tokyo 1962-65.
My real love of Japanese poetry, beginning with ancient tanka,
however,
had led me to the 20th century and the Japanese discovery of the
colloquial free verse of Europe. With modernization at the end of the
19th century many Japanese poets were turning away from tanka
and haiku
and writing in freer forms. At the same time, it is interesting to
note, that early 20th century poets in the west were beginning to show
deep interest in the short poetry of Japan!
Beginning with my University of Hawaii days in the 1950s, I had
written undergraduate research papers on the Japanese influence on
European and American poetry, especially the Imagists and such poets as
Ezra Pound. And, in turn, when it came time to write a MA thesis, in
1959, I decided to ask the question, "What influence did the West
have on Japanese poetry?" Well, that opened up a whole can of worms of
late 19th and early 20th century rejection of traditional poetry and a
full embracing of modern free verse. My paper was a brief
historical development of modern poetry from the first attempts to
translate Keats, Shelly and even Shakespeare down to some of the
Japanese poets we now know today: Kitahara Hakushu, Shimazaki Toson,
Nishwaki Junzaburo, Kusano Shimpei and the one who
became my favorite of
the earlier poets. Hagiwara Sakutaro.
It was Hagiwara Sakutaro, now considered the father
of modern Japanese
poetry, who really was able to break away from the haiku and tanka
tradition of 5, 7, 5 syllables and write kogo jiyushi (colloquial
language free verse poetry) and still maintain that poetry is the "music
of words." Most of my own translations over the next few decades were
in the area of "modern Japanese" poetry.
One of the first poems in Sakutaro’s poems in his
1917 Tsuki ni Hoeru
(Howling at the Moon) that is said to have changed the direction of
Japanese poetry in modern times is his poem "Take" (Bamboo):
Take
Hikaru chimen ni take ga hae,
Aodake ga hae,
Chika niwa take no ne ga hae,
Ne ga shidai
ni hosorami,
Ne no saki yori senmo ga
hae,
Kasukani furue.
Kataki chimen ni take ga hae,
Chijo ni surudoku take ga hae,
Masshigura ni take ga hae,
Koreru fushibushi rinrin to,
Aozora no moto ni take ga hae
Take, take, take ga hae.
Bamboo
From the bright earth bamboo grows,
Green bamboo grows,
Under the earth roots of bamboo grow,
Roots that slowly taper off,
Roots whose tips are sprouting hair,
Dimly, misty hair is growing
And faintly squirming.
From the firm earth bamboo grows
From the earth sharp bamboo grows
Lunging upwards bamboo grows;
Frozen in majestic joints
Bamboo grows beneath the sky,
Bamboo, bamboo, bamboo grows.
In 1962, I decided to leave New York and Columbia, for a while anyway,
and receiving a two year Fulbright grant, moved to Tokyo. It was my
goal at the time to translate Hagiwara Sakutaro at Keio University, but I
also was much involved with Tokyo literary scenes of all kinds. It
was
in Tokyo I was able to discover all the
modern and avant-garde writers
and poets I had only read about in New York. It was in Tokyo too that I
retuned again to more appreciate traditional tanka
poetry.
I found that Hagiwara had written tanka as a school
boy, but he later
turned solidly against such fixed form poetry when he discovered free
verse of the west. In the same light as he, I myself started
dismissing the early "thumping of counted out syllables." I found
his flowing lines of free verse more appealing than his older tanka.
My first real serious return to traditional poetry, however, came
in Tokyo in 1963 or 1964. One day, I
received phone call from the
Chief Priest of the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. I had known the Meiji
Jingu as the sacred place of enshrinement for the
Emperor Meiji
(1868-1912) and I remembered from reading somewhere that the Emperor Meiji,
like all Emperors of Japan, wrote tanka (waka) poetry.
Chief Priest Takazawa said he knew of my reputation
as a translator of
poetry and as a student of Donald Keene of Columbia. He then asked me if I
would be interested in translating a few waka poems
of the Emperor Meiji
to pass out to the guests of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I really hadn't
translated much in terms of tanka since my
undergraduate days at the University of Hawaii and a few more in term papers at Columbia. I think I said something like I
would be interested in trying, and a car and driver was sent for me.
The Emperor Meiji’s gyosei (waka
poems by an Emperor) poems I
eventually translated were selected by the Chief Priest Takazawa
and a
committee made up of The Grand Chamberlain of the Imperial Household
and poetry tutor to the Crowned Prince (who is now the Heisei or present
Emperor of the country). My translations were also scrutinized by
several professors of Shinto at a leading Shinto university in Tokyo. We had a very long discussion, I
remember, on the translation of the word kami which
is the Japanese term for Shinto deities. Some of the advice I received
contained comments like 'gods' or 'deities' perhaps, not a singular ‘God’, no
capital letters, it should be plural . . . etc.
During one of the first of my many visits I was asked if I would like to
meet the Emperor Meiji! Knowing that he died in 1912, I was not sure
what to say, but finally muttered 'dekireba' (If it
is possible…) I
was then taken to the inner shrine to be purified and was formally
introduced to the soul of the Emperor Meiji by Chief Priest Takazawa.
"This is Harold Wright. We have asked him to translate some of your poems
into English…"
At last, I was able to produce the translations, and they were passed out in a
welcoming gesture to all the Olympic Guests in 1964.
A couple of examples:
Yomo no umi
Mina harakara to
Omou yo ni
Nado namikaze no
Tachi-wawagu ran
It is our hope
That all the world’s oceans
Be joined in peace
So why do the winds and waves
Now rise up in angry rage?
Umi koete
Harubaru kitsuru
Marebito ni
Waga yamamizu no
Keshiki mesebaya.
By crossing oceans
From distant foreign lands
Our guests have arrived;
Oh, to have them see the views
Of our mountains and waters!
A few years later I was invited back to Tokyo to participate in the 70th
anniversary of the death of the Emperor Meiji. I was asked to
translate more poems of both the Emperor and the Empress Shoken.
Waka
Poetry of the Emperor Meiji, Waka Poetry of the Empress Shoken,
are
still on sale at the Meiji Shrine. Also, the Chief Priest Takazawa
personally took copies of these books to the over 200 embassies in Tokyo
and requested that the poems be re-translated into the languages of
their own countries. In the forward of the book, Chief Priest Takazawa
wrote: "It is our heartfelt hope that these poems be further translated
into the languages of friendly nations all over the world in order that
people everywhere on earth can appreciate the 'magokoro,'
or 'pure
heartedness' of our Emperor Meiji and the global peace for which he
strove."
The Emperor Meiji wrote:
Ten
Hisakata no
Sora wa hedate
mo
Nakarikeri
Tsuchi naru kuni wa
Sakai aredomo
Sky
No line exists
Which sector off the sky
So high above
Though the nations of this earth
Are all bound by borders
One of the more international poems by the Empress Shoken
goes:
Moto wa mina
Onaji nezashi no
Hitogusa mo
Kotoba no hana ya
Chiji ni saku ran.
In the beginning
People, like all of our plants,
Sprang from one root;
And the flowers of language
Bloom forth by the thousands.
Well, even back in the 60s, I thought translating Imperial poetry was
an interesting experience, but I went back to translating more
contemporary free verse. I was asked by Kodansha International to
translate the poetry of a little girl who wrote poetry to ease the pain
of her mother’s death. Her book, Okaasan no Baka, had become a best
seller in Japan. My version of Miyuki Furuta’s work was titled: Why,
Mother, Why? It was published in 1965 with photographs of the girl by
the famed photographer, Eikoh Hosoe.
One example is:
Why, Mother Why?
My mother
died of a brain hemorrhage
why?
My bother’s gone skiing,
My father’s at school.
They have gone
leaving, me, Miyuki
all alone.
Mother,
the rice-cakes you liked
have been delivered.
Mother,
you were so good
at cutting rice cakes.
Why, Mother, Why?
----------------
[To be continued, Vol. 4, No. 4]
Harold Wright is Professor Emeritus of Antioch College, Visiting Professor of Foreign Civilizations and Language (Japanese), and Director of AEA's Japan Field Studies.
He is currently teaching a variety of courses dealing with Japanese culture, history, literature, poetry translation, and language. A recipient of numerous grants and scholarships, including a 1985 NEA Fellowship for Translators Award, he is also the author of eight books, including The Selected Poems of Shuntaro Tanikawa, a critically acclaimed volume published by North Point Press, and his second book of Tanikawa’s poems, Map of Days, published by Katydid Press in 1997. Ten Thousand Leaves: Love Poems from the Manyoshu, published by the Overlook Press, has been translated from 8th century Japanese. His current work is editing two more books of modern Japanese poetry he has translated, as well as editing a collection of his own original poetry written in Kyoto and Ohio. He is also an active storyteller in Ohio and other parts of the USA.
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