FUMI
Saito, IN THICKETS OF MEMORY - A Selection of Tanka in Japanese and English -
Selected and Translated by James Kirkup and Makoto Tamaki, pp. 405 plus
Introduction etc. in English, Miwa-Shoten, Tokyo, 2002.
A
new anthology of tanka poems that move and astonish, reviewed by
Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, England
Those who think Japanese tanka are boring
should think again. Granted that there are many instances of traditional tanka
falling into stereotypes and clichés, if you read Saito Fumi (1909-2002), your
tanka-life will never be the same again.
"Fumi" is the given name of this
celebrated lady tanka poet from Japan. The name means "a writer "or
"a literary figure" as well as its original sense of "a calendar
writer" or "a recorder of history", i.e. "a historian".
Her long life, spanning 93 years, was a small-scale record of the history of
Meiji, Taisho, Showa and Heisei Japan, and a kind of calendar in itself, to give
us the sense of time and events. Her tanka, written over the past seventy years,
is the record of such life. She died of breast cancer on 26 April 2002 at the
age of 93, but not without turning the fatal disease into heart-rending tanka
poems poetry first.
The following is almost shocking:
nyubo no oka usete no no gotoki mune hibari
nousagi mushi-domo mo koyo
Having lost the mound
of one breast, my chest is like
a field. - O, skylarks,
come and visit, with the hare,
and the worms, and the insects.
(translated by James Kirk and Makoto Tasaki
and same hereinafter, unless stated otherwise)
Operated on twice, Fumi was ready to go. A few
weeks before she died, she asked her son to include only a small amount of white
flowers for her funeral, for she wanted many colourful flowers. A renowned tanka
poet who attended the funeral was astonished to see bright pink, red and yellow
blossoms adorning Fumi's portrait-photo at the memorial service.
Images of death had profoundly influenced
Fumi's poetry. On the snowy day of 26 February 1936, a group of ten young
military officers carried out a serious coup d'etat. They were put down within a
few days and some of them were executed without a fair trial. Called "the
2.26 Incident" it was an important episode in the dark days of modern
Japanese history. Fume's father, a major general of the Imperial Army (and a
tanka poet, himself), was arrested on the suspicion of his involvement in the
plot and was imprisoned for two years. Two of those officers put to death were
her childhood friends. It would be was a family tragedy and disgrace, which
haunted Fumi, becoming a central theme of her poems.
nuka no manaka ni tama wo uketaru omokage no
tachii ni tsukite natsu no odoro ya
A bullet right through
the middle of the forehead -
that image begins
haunting every move I make -
all the weird summer grasses.
dakuryu da dakuryu da to sakebi nagare-yuku
sue wa deido ka yoake ka shiranu
The end of it all -
swept away screaming muddy
waters muddy waters -
will it be deep in mud or
deep in dawn - how should I know -
kei sadamari mushiro shizukeki akekure no
chichi wo kanashi to iu hoka wa naku
After sentencing,
seeing my father become
rather quieter -
day and night - I cannot help
feeling such sadness for him.
Now, what has happened to make has made it
possible for us to read these and other of her powerful tanka, totalling seven
hundred, in English? The answer is this substantial anthology of bilingual
tanka, the product of six years of hard work by someone who understands Japanese
culture and literature very well, James Kirkup, and his Japanese poet friend,
Makoto Tamaki. The selections were drawn from an estimated five thousand poems
by Fumi. In other words, one in seven tanka was selected, a very high ratio;
about twice the size of an average tanka anthology in Japan.
The title of the anthology, In Thickets of
Memory, is taken from the following tanka:
kono mori ni dankon no aru ki arazu ya kioku
no shigemi kurami-tsutsu ari
Within this forest,
is there not a tree that bears
the mark of a bullet?
In thickets of memory
undergrowth keeps darkening.
As Kirkrup mentions in the introduction,
memory, sickness and death, are main themes of Fumi's tanka throughout her
career. Her father, Ryu, must have been her best teacher; she started to write
tanka under his tutelage at the tender age of ten. Ryu was so keen on the genre
that he established his own tanka association, making it possible for him to
mingle with leading tanka poets of the day.
One such poet was Wakayama Bokusui (1885-1928),
well-known and liked for his romantic style and for subject matter dealing with
journeys and drinking. Bokusui gave encouragement to the teenaged Fumi to carry
on writing her tanka. She would author a dozen anthologies which, in 1997, were
compiled into a single monumental collection. Her inherent talent, early
training and the trauma of the the "2.26 Incident" all helped to
develop her into a poet of extraordinary realism and honesty, becoming revered
as the queen of modern tanka in Japan.
Despite such showers of adoration, she called
herself rather differently, in fact, most extraordinarily. One name she went by
is Ryukei-sha, meaning "an exiled convict"; another was Oni,
meaning, "demon", or "ogre". Fumi could not forgive the
regime that had wrongly indicted her father. She now identified herself with him
in terms of being in exile, like a demon awaiting her chance for revenge and
retribution. According to Kirkup, "Critics have pointed out that this
"grudge mentality" was one of the most powerful driving forces behind
her work."
Married to a medical doctor who later went to
war, she was left behind to suffer loneliness and estrangement. During the air
raids on Tokyo, her husband was given a medical discharge from the military, and
the family evacuated to Nagano prefecture. While nursing him, and also her
mother, who had lost her sight, Fumi expressed deep grief through her many
tanka, crafted with relentless clarity and originality. Themes included nature:
animals, natural landscapes, birds, trees, flowers, insects and worms. However,
it is her poetry of human affairs, mainly of her own personal experiences, which
move and astonish us.
The tanka selected for In Thickets of Memory
are mostly "human affairs" poems. Even when there is reference to
nature (e.g. ice, cherry blossom, oranges, or birds), her poems are not purely
about nature, but are heavily permeated with the with human relationship, often
depicting the ugly or negative side of nature. Her tanka are often rendered
"with savage humour and macabre irony" (from Kirkup's article in The
Independent). There is no sentimentality there, but rather, realism as stern
as Courbet or Maupassant.
ryukeisha wa haka nashi hi nashi no no atari
oushiki komuru nichibotsu no ato
For those who were sent
into exile, there are no
graves, and no gravestones.
Only after the sun sets
a yellow shade shrouds the fields.
shi no ashi wo mitarishi kana henpei ni
shite mono-yawarakaku ayumeri
Have I beheld them
with my own eyes, the feet of
death? -- If so, I think
it is flat-footed, and walks
with such soft steps on the floor.
mahi no otto to me no mienu haha wo sou ni
oki waga ronen no aki ni iriyuku
With my paralyzed
husband, sightless old mother
placed on either hand,
I am entering into
the autumn of my old age.
waga toshi ni haha wa meshii no yami ni sumi
zu no naka ni nan no iro wo mite ishi
When she was my age,
living in the darkness of
the blind, my mother -
I wonder what colours she
was gazing at in her head?
oi-fuke-shi haha wo shikari-te namida otsu
mumyo mugen ni ware mo sumi-ite
After scolding my
blind mother growing senile
in old age, I shed
tears - I, too, am living in
this world's lightless eternity.
kabe wo tsutai ayumi-shi haha no yubi no ato
no yogore mo sude ni medatazu narinu
All along the wall
my blind mother used to pass,
the traces left by
her fingertips already
are becoming fainter now.
Tsuyu-shigure sinano no aki no obasute no
warewo okizari okishi mono-tachi
In the mountains where
old women were left to die
in the drenching dews
of autumn in Shinano --
all gone, leaving me all alone.
Fumi was born into the Japan, which moulded
women into docile and obedient dolls with such accomplishments as tea ceremony,
flower arrangement, domestic work and "women's way". However, she was
a modern girl who liked "Cocteau, Dali, Droyer, Bunuel and the German
expressionists" (Kirkup). However, one would chuckle at the fact that there
were things she just could not stand:
keitai-denwa motazu owaramu sinde kara made
benri ni yobi-dasarete tamaru-ka
I must end my life
without a mobile phone. - I
just couldn't stand it,
receiving inquiries
even after I had died.
In the New Year of 1997, Fumi was invited to
the New Year poetry reading at the Imperial Palace for the second time. It is
the ultimate honour for a tanka poet to be so invited. This time, she performed
as meshudo [an
official judge (selector) who chooses poems written on the theme given by the
Emperor], and
read the following tanka:
no no naka ni sugata yutakeki ichiju ari
kaze mo tsukihi mo eda ni idakita
In the field
there is a single tree
whose shape is exuberant,
holding winds and seasons
with its branches.
(Version by the reviewer)
Afterwards, Fumi told her tanka friend, Okano
Hirohiko, that reading that poem on the occasion, she could get off her chest
what had been on her mind for such a long time. What exactly had been on her
mind, no one knows. However, Hirohiko thinks it was a sense of indignation and
grudge over the fate of her father and the young officers, whom she felt were
mistreated by the authorities at the time of the "2.26" Incident. One
sincerely hopes that Fumi regained her peace of mind in this way, for the nearly
four hundred pages of In Thickets of Memory contain mostly tanka poems saturated
with bitterness, grudge and sadness.
Death, as has already been mentioned, was a
main theme of Fumi's poems. In spite of that, she had her fair share of
longevity. Fumi's mother also lived long (90 years). She was, therefore,
conscious of outliving her mother -- the age of 90 becoming some kind of a goal
post, after which life may mean something different.
kyu-ju sai no saki wa ikutsu demo iiyouna o-tenki
no naka hana ga saku nari
In this fine weather
making me feel I don't care
how many more years
I shall live after ninety,
the cherries are blossoming.
niju-ichi seiki-jin wa ikanaru uta wo kaku
kyujunen ikite ware wa kore dake
In this century,
the twenty-first, what kind of
tanka will they write?
After living ninety years,
I wrote just so few good ones.
sara ni ikiyo to naraba nokori no hi wo
tsumamu koku soko naku yuki furasu tomo
If it be my fate
to live longer, I must store all
my remaining days
-- even empty skies let fall
endlessly fathomless snows.
In this review, I have focused on Fumi's tanka
and life. I am therefore forgoing something that readers are itching to know:
what I might think about the quality of the translations. I have been a
professional translator for most of my life. I am also one of those who are
painfully aware of the importance of translation in haiku, tanka and related
verse. Although such translations into English are still woefully scarce, seeing
an increase in recent years is a welcome trend. The increase, however, is more
prevalent in haiku than in tanka. In this sense, In Thickets of Memory
is an important addition to our bookshelves. I know James Kirkup, and I have
enjoyed his translations of, and writings on haiku. His keen and delicate
sensibility, the care he takes with words, his ceaseless effort to better his
understanding of Japan when it is already extremely deep, and above all, himself
being a celebrated poet, all work to create literary readings of rare merit.
There is a special section in In Thickets of Memory where Kirkup takes
pains to explain his translation in collaboration with Tamaki. This is their apologia.
They have made their case. I leave the assessment of it to other critics and,
especially, to the reader.
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