Pathway to Japanese Literature

Rebellion

—To the Poets of Asahikawa—

While striking Shika's antlers with sharp cracks,

They saw a small group coming over ice waves on a sled.

Everywhere there was the sun's path indeed.

What was truth and what was not could not be declared indeed.

While startled by their own footsteps,

While their faces were blackened by the dust they themselves stirred up,

There were a few people quietly conducting excavation.

I and you all found joy in secretly conducting rebellion like this indeed.

Oh, yes—everything had to be done secretly, calmly, patiently.

Each of us must sow our own true seeds.

Let us advance further—of course, to the very last one of us.

Even if there were tens of thousands of spies—
“Even if there were tens of thousands of spies—
why should we have any reason to fear them?!”
The bourgeoisie’s songs too...

When we tried rearranging things to our side like this,

It wasn't entirely a lost cause.

They too had all sorts of ingredients in abundance,

But we completely seized the pot from them.

If the cook was skilled, the ingredients came alive.

“Comrades, take heart!”

“Don’t forget—the pot’s here with us.”

“Whether we boil them down or roast them through—”

“Isn’t this our own doing?”

“Only traitors and spies remain—”

“The thrill of crushing lice—”

“—isn’t some petty joy of slaughter.”

“Yesterday they sucked proletariat blood—”

“Today we crack their vermin shells—”

“—with this crisp snap of justice!”

“Even ten thousand spies—”

“What cause have we to fear them?!”

We crush what won’t be cooked—

We do nothing but crush them like lice.

Song of the Mountain Tit

I am a Mountain Tit who trills splendidly,
I am a Mountain Tit who loves freedom,
Being the Mountain Tit of my wilds,
I love the natural order,
A single tree piercing into the sky,
I perch on its sharp tip and sing,
I—to a sharp cry
Seeking a suitable world,

To new fields and to new woods I go,
What a little bird I am!

O beauty of surrounding harmony!
O Freedom, what is your true form?
Call it freedom, call it the shackles of freedom—
Town mountain tit,
Do you know its true nature,
Can you articulate it concretely,
Probably, you cannot do that—
Those who trill freely and dart about freely,
Knowing all of these,
You would speak of all these things.
Town mountain tit, your tricks—
You were captured by human hands,

And fearsome training was imposed—
When they open the birdcage lid,
you chirp-chirp while
darting out from there,
peck open the small shrine door with your beak,
clamp down on a fortune slip inside,
place it in a human's waiting palm,
then retreat back to your cage once more.

This constitutes your whole existence—
you with your tiny frame
sustaining humans a hundredfold your size
through these charming antics of yours—
you town Mountain Tit who forgot freedom,

Like those humans who have forgotten freedom,
the imposed habits—
you pitiable one who have absolutely concluded,

Mountain Tit of the town,

At the instant you leave the birdcage,

Look up above your head,

The sky demands action from you,
You must move your wings to take flight,
Even if your wings are weak,
Efforts to desire freedom must be made—
This order and these habits humans gave you,

All were fabricated to suit human convenience -
order and habits manufactured,
All that is black-hearted
To fatten themselves at others' expense
Create laws and order then impose them,
Those who attempt transgression are threatened,
They try two times, three times,

Threatened four five times,
Then your Mountain Tit gave up.
You did not attempt to take flight.
You had forgotten your wings,

And then for you,
That which was vulgarly named fate began,
The things called habit continued.
Then humans were already at ease,
Bite down on your kiseru,
Behold, the Mountain Tit’s grand performance!

While saying this, they opened your birdcage door.

That was the moment.
That you must fly into the sky.

But you do not fly.

Chirping "chun-chun," you go to take a fortune slip,

What a miserable head you have,

Mountain Tit of the town!

Even earthworms, when we catch them,

writhe their bodies violently.

When you cut them into three with your beak,

Do they not struggle to flee in three directions?

You are defeated—by human will,

You are a slave to the absolute given by humans,

Nothing could be more wretched than this—
Once resolved, act at once!
Ah, but you never even resolve to act—
You must contend with humankind—
You too must possess freedom—
Yet it remains confined within narrow bounds—
Your freedom—
You are kept beneath human command—
We soar through fields and villages—
Not absolute freedom by any measure—
Terrible birds approach, storms rage, fierce wings descend—
Yet I—against these foes—
Strive to battle and prevail—

The contest with these things—
It was decided only after unleashing every ounce of one’s strength,
You did not even attempt to take flight,
How meager was your longing for freedom—
Under the blue sky yet unaware of the blue sky,

The Mountain Tit’s cosmology
should by no means be inferior to that of humans—
Mountain Tit of the town!

Your will exists only within the birdcage,

What descends from above to smother you.
That is human will.
Therefore，you cannot escape humans.
Those who truly love freedom，
those who steal freedom，
oppressive，
must possess a cosmology countless times greater than the enemy’s.

The new order and harmony of a new world,
Entirely free,

A new life will likely begin from there.

Heartbreak.

With just the two of us—to witness Japan’s sorrow,
Let us go to the foot of distant mountains.
Under layered dense trees,
Let us crouch motionless and speak together.

You maintained an exceedingly reserved romantic sentiment.

We simply held hands at length,

Then bowed courteously and parted ways.

What immaculate fastidiousness you cultivated!

As resonant fog came rolling down,

Your Yuzen-patterned hapi coat grew damp,

And the eyes within your comely frame

They had hidden themselves among the stems of Miscanthus grass.

This world holds no illusion.

It was the loss of your beauty within the fog.

I hurt; I will pursue.

I would rather become a stone lantern.

I always believe in the Orient.

Only when I lose love do I truly consider the demise of the Orient from the depths of my heart.

To Low Pressure

Through Labor Strikes

Our workplace seethed.

“Comrade, your trouser button’s undone!”

“Hey there—oh, and your hat’s crooked too!”

“Hey there.”

We were attentive even to minute things,

We carefully watched over one another.

We readjusted our gaiters from the shoes up.

We straightened our hats properly.

We crossed our arms and puffed out our chests.

Now was the time for us to move into action.

＊ ＊ ＊

At that moment, we looked up at the cloud above the factory,
An unadorned white cloud,
Cloud, become our nourishment.

We never saw you as celestial beings.
That had always been our

Above the fierce struggle
It is because we could recognize you.

＊ ＊ ＊

Clouds are our allies.

On clear days, he remained perfectly still,
He knew there wasn't the slightest stagnation.
When stared at intently—he

In order to merge with tomorrow's low pressure,
He was moving with truly fierce intensity.

The mother took her son’s hands.
Like a cold-blooded person,
she made him speak.

I don’t know what a mother is—
what form she takes—
in what way she loves her son?
Faced with maternal affection—
how ought a son respond?

My mother coughed violently,
making the throat gulp audibly.

Up to about eighty percent in the cup by the bedside,

Bright red—in this world, to such an extent,
she expelled pigment so intensely vivid that one might think no other bright colors existed.
Four-year-old me quickly noticed this,
indiscriminately to anyone and everyone,
“Mom vomited something red—”
if I were to spread the word

Father with terrifying eyes
Father would have glared at me fiercely.

Now I have absolutely no memory of that time.

Even after I had grown considerably,
Father would reminisce habitually in this manner.

“If only there had been money then,
I wouldn’t have had to kill your mother—”
This was Father’s wonderful common sense.

The one who killed Mother—
It was not Father without income.

We poor people—in this way—
without even being able to see a proper doctor—
hastened death.

The one who killed Mother was not Father.
It was the bourgeoisie’s doing.
I frankly hated such enemies.
What shape does a mother have?
I’ve never seen that thing.

March 1900

Lenin was exiled.

He followed the Yenisei River
along the 300-verst road

Day and night, he drove the sled at breakneck speed.

Lenin at each post station—
How devotedly he cared for his mother and Krupskaya!
In his mother’s “hand-warming”

They intertwined their hands and warmed each other.
This year too, Three L Day arrives,
every year amid new circumstances,

Lenin crackles
He lives and manifests himself through our praxis.

“Comrades”

Our Lenin

A blazing mass of love’s fire

He drove headlong through the severe cold of snow-covered plains for our liberation movement—the scene of his return to Russia—let us vividly picture this scene.

At Toyotama Prison

Comrade Sano Hiroshi’s mother
When the conversation with her son ended in the visitation room,
She tightly gripped Comrade Sano’s hand.
Her son’s hand was icy cold.
“You’re so icy cold.”
Having said this, the mother
With both hands, she kept rubbing her son’s hands.
The guard flew into a blazing rage.
“Stop it! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The brute stomped the floor with a thud.
The brute apparently poked with an iron staff and stood up in a huff.

When I heard this story,
a mother being someone who,
when her son's hands grow cold,
would chafe them to warm him - this I learned for the first time.
I've never known such an experience.
What tender thing a mother must be.

The comrades in prison—
how overjoyed they must have been.
We all—
our enemy, the bourgeoisie—let us hate them.
Those who tear apart the love between mother and son.
Those who tear apart the love between husband and wife.
Those who tear apart the love between brother and sister.

We shall swear.
Their entrails—just you wait and see,

we will pull them all out and show you.

Is a mother a violet flower,

or something gentle like a tulip?

I've never seen its shape.

The things I know are
only the love between comrades,
and in the intervals—the intense intervals of struggle—
I will try to seek out something resembling a mother:
until I’m drenched in sweat
fighting the enemy to my heart’s content,
then emerging into the open field
to be blown by the wind—
a mother must surely be like spring,
gently stroking my hands and cheeks.

Farewell Poem for Delegates

The world is continuous land

The world was continuous water.

When the wind blew in, wafting thickly,

The scent of buckwheat and wheat came.

“Comrades, go to the Soviet and return.”

We would stay here and listen—

Tractors, stations’

Fluttering flags,

Dnieprostroi’s

Eight hundred ten thousand horsepower

Resounding through falling water—

Over there,

Setting aside global economic depression uproar,

91.96 million hectares

are in full swing of harvest campaign—

Comrades of dispatched delegation,

Japan’s pigs
With such gestures
Counted their ritual offerings
Because they were so fat their inner thighs chafed
Their swaggering gait was like this
They had golden ingots
From when they chased Ma Zhanshan
The way they blew their bugles and such

Report skillfully through your gestures,
the collective farms' and factories' and circles'

“Make the young shock troopers laugh.”

Japan’s woolen fabric factories
had intensified labor since summer and continued still—
heavy, thick, yellow
soldiers’ winter coats they forged without respite.
This coat—who makes it? Where?
For what purpose? Who wears it?—
all of Japan’s workers and farmers
knew full well—
“Convey this.”

“Comrades, our souvenirs—”
“The Magnitogorsk Second Blast Furnace’s”
“workers’ will blazing like fire—”

how fiercely it blazes—
the fury raging against the enemy,
the ferocious roar of belching flames—
go listen closely and bring back word.
Grant us talent.

I became someone's proxy

I must protest

For my own sake,
Or perhaps for others' sake—
Ah, that is not the voice speaking now
To those who stay silent
I will stand at protest's vanguard instead,
Ah, not what scurries about this moment
To those shackled where they stand—

I will protest instead,

High—

It is the great summit tower of hatred,

Low—

It is the abyssal depths of sorrow—the very bottom.

From this high place

To the low place—

The exhaustion of my body shuttling back and forth,

Those who shout and run about are saved,

But those silently shedding tears—

What about the weak ones shedding tears?
In place of these ones,
Let me move my tongue,

My body,
I will recklessly abuse.
God - grant me yourself
and reviling enemies -
bestow upon me
this scourge-tongued gift:
to spit curses sharpened
on history's grindstone.

Skirmish line
Kissing carnation flowers
Staring blankly at the river’s flow
Contemplating through endless nights
Going out to meet women

Reading books, writing poetry,

I was slapped across the cheek by the policeman.

Why in this way—

Of various incidents—
Am I plunging into their maelstrom?
Everything—everything—
Bends entirely to their gracious will.

Ah, and my life—
All at once flaring up into joy and pain—

Cells renewed—
History demanded the well’s replacement,
I obediently submitted.
Now the waters of new thought

overflowing,

And now,

with a stomach that chews with terrible efficiency

I have a heart that endures chaotic labor.

Pleasure and aimless wandering,

All things serious and unserious,

In life's events,

There was not a single useless thing.

I devoured everything on the plate.

Voracious to the extreme,

All became blood and flesh.

In the laboring body,

Now new cells

Were forming a skirmish line.

Sweet Pear Poem

The midnight people’s

Sleeping breaths were inaudible.

The lid of a deep hole was lifted somewhere.

As if a man were being drawn into that place,

I found myself all too easily pulled into the night's stillness.

I truly

At such a time,

With this attitude, I create poems of rebellion against the enemy.

I consider this fact a joyous thing,

For my work,

Someone will probably support me.

I do not make demands on my readers,

I am standing on one bank or the other.

The people on that bank will probably celebrate me.

And then first of all, for my midnight work, there was a sweet pear on the desk.
It waited for me to finish my work.
I bit into it, skin and all,
Like a mischievous child.
Juice dripped down.

The horses of the Red Guards cavalry have galloped tens of ri

like leaping into a stream's water,

I recall someone’s words: “Art is about sweating—”

The sweet juice stubbornly resists separating from skin and flesh.

My teeth played the role of wedges and levers, separating the pear’s flesh with a decisive crack.

When I looked, my gums were torn and the pear was smeared with blood.

But that damn pear won't stop dripping its juice.

Rather, from the tear, it drips even more fiercely than before.

I voraciously sucked its sweetness.
I battled the pear.
What admirable humor!
And my blood-stained pear was sweet.

Even with this attitude, I want to sink my teeth into reality,
With voracity that doesn’t spill a single drop of juice,
Like a pear, I grasp reality firmly with both hands—
Taking up Mayakovsky’s tongue—

Vladimir Mayakovsky!
Since your tongue no longer exists in this world,
Since you can probably no longer speak in this world,
I, taking over from the past,
I will take over the work of your tongue.
You committed suicide,
leaving behind both bold, outstanding poems
and poems excellently sorrowful,
You were a poet for the workers, but
the workers' flaws—
It’s regrettable you lacked the power to denounce them,
Now our way of thinking about life
By diluting complaints and hatred,

It might be diluted,

but it would never disappear,

You praised the Soviet.
You never raised a shield.
But you denied your own life,
you—the Soviet within your own flesh—

How could you have denied the Soviet within your own flesh—
There’s no such thing as a dictionary without annotations in this world.
I can’t conceive of such a thing existing,

There’s no such thing as an unconditionally beloved Sovyetto.

Poor Mayakovsky,

Don’t humans commit suicide when annotations or phonetic guides cease to accompany them—

when they cease to be attached—

Isn’t it that they commit suicide?

You created poems of critique.

—Does the anger emerge from within the flesh there?

Or like a cloud in trousers,

When one remains obediently without sin,

Which one you preferred—this is what you proclaimed to the people,

Truthfully, you erupted from your flesh and sang with rage,

The people and history—
While they had yet to write their answer to your question—

Mayakovsky,
Your purity,
If such is your purity,
I too want to commit suicide like you,

I bow my head before history,

I am in pain, but

Before this inevitability, I can have confidence,

For the women.

I can even put on airs as a proletariat's ladies' man,

I, like you, from within the flesh—

I don't shout out spirit,

I'm terrified of that,

Like you, in flesh and trouser pockets,

putting your spirit there and here

While doing so, I’m terrified of losing my spirit.

Mayakovsky,

You are a teacher to us latecomers,

For those who are alive,

Your suicide was yesterday's event.

I do not overlook yesterday's events.

For me and for Sovyetto,
For the world’s proletariat,
You and Yesenin are ruby annotations,
And our dictionary has grown abundant,
When I turn to the page titled 'Suicide,' you all appear immediately.
In that sense too, your death—

Proletarian death—
profoundly significant alongside countless comrades' deaths—
You who suffered unto death,

Mayakovsky,

You—

"The sun’s bull is mottled

"The year’s oxcart is slow—"'

Despite having sung so magnificently,

Passion severed the reins—you who spurred the horse onward,

I cannot kill myself like you

For the duty to live outweighs death,

Very well—even if that life

proves more wretched than death—

To the New Youth

He was damn serious—
A stubborn hard-headed youth,
He wore a sullen face.

At times he burst into loud laughter,

He fell deeply silent.
He became forcefully eloquent.
He no longer borrowed the enemy’s words.

He speaks in the words of youth.

This youth has not forgotten the past.

He does not know the past—

He is entirely new—

The mistakes that will be caused one after another from now on are also

new mistakes,

they are not the old ones.

He probably cannot avoid it.

Even the courage to cause mistakes,
The new success—
The new success was his calculation—
Was begun anew.
He would no longer be degraded.

unacquainted with weariness
The life of youth,
A bee on a flower,
A child of ceaseless labor,

He was new—
He walked with the soles of his feet—
The new earth—
He broke free from old paralysis,
And new paralysis—
The act of dulling him—
He had to remain vigilant.
What rescues paralysis—
That it is young actions—
They must not forget.

The grindstone of reality

"You there—hurry to the lumberyard."
"Go and do it."
"What for? To buy lumber—"
"So we'll build a cell for freedom."
"For whom?"
"It's not for you to enter."
"It's for that willful thing called freedom to enter."

Tenacious poverty and
living while fighting—

The knight of freedom grew ever more ferocious,
He ate no food,
He could do nothing but idly churn out poems.
My wild, foolish laughter
angered the well-fed gentry.

Reality is a grindstone,

The rebellious spirit only grows keener,

Of such a society
Of such a state,
Of such a class,
Generally, they desired to live long,
The entity that could not be contained
It was free will,
If they cut off my hands, I would write with my feet.
If they cut off my legs, I would write with my mouth.
If my mouth were sealed,
I would sing through my asshole.

Wave of Desire

1

1

He stared intently at people's lives.

Then something resembling regret attacked relentlessly,
he reached a state where he could neither sit nor stand still,
regret transformed into suffering.
The people lived in silence,
people did not forget the word “××” in the dictionary.
The word called “rebellion” still—
rebellion remained unchanged as a written character.
The only thing that changed was the people’s
method of struggling forward.

The people cherished peace above all else,
In the most passive form,
They built fences around their own lives,
That fence—their own master’s

in the sense that it was adjacent to the fence

It was the most secure and peaceful fence.

He saw people maintaining themselves that way—

With obstinate persistence avoiding conflict

When he saw them evading in such manner,

Ashamed of his own demon-like nature,

Into the people's tranquility

This act of planting fresh suffering—

Would it truly become

Happiness for those people?

Was this demon also meant

To guarantee these people's summoning?

He began doubting whether it could.

2

The morrow lay beyond knowing.

The only clear thing was the nature of his own desire.

Conquering all things
At that moment of striving to exhaust everything
His actions
Like some form of death
Stirred winds even in quiet fields

quiet fields and those who dwell there

For those who dwell there, would his actions truly—

Would they be loved and thanked?
His desire stood lofty
For those lowly seekers of wants
He found himself perpetually envied
And doubly so by ordinary folk clinging to their muted lives

When he spoke of truth,
because he always stirred up winds,
he was bitterly looked back upon.
In fact, there existed lives like being immersed in a bath—
such a thing as a quiet life.
And there were not a few people who felt no lack within themselves,
many people who remained unaware,
the lives of such people

He thrust his face into the window.

when he peered inside and shouted

The women and children let out a shriek.
And then the master braced himself.
The peaceful people cursed in unison.
—He has brought misfortune, they said.

3
There were many gloomy people.
He was a friend to those people,
He engaged in ordinary conversation

When he interacted with these people,
they loved him.
But when he touched truth—

People gradually left him.

For him, such truth—

When he spoke, it was a pleasure—
But for those who cherished peace,
When he realized this caused them pain,
Finally he distanced himself from all things,
Creating an infinite chasm between
The people’s tranquility and his own misfortune.

he even considered creating

is to sever life from this world,

Ah, but even the desire for death itself—
To the extent that it rivaled the desire for life
Or rather, because he desired something of even higher value.

He did not have the courage to choose death.

Even regarding romance with women,
regarding money, regarding friendships,
appetite, wisdom,
beauty, alcohol, gambling—
all instinctive things—
they tried with full force to snatch them away.

Who owned these items?

All ordinary people possessed these,
were somewhat satisfied with these.

They shattered the thick wall.

The large hand moved,
feeling triumphant as it went to steal
from all things—
the stubborn adherence to all old desires—
swinging down the hammer of his new desires
to shatter them.

4

A bewitchingly kind woman.

When she looked with imploring eyes,

he, to her wish,

the moment he granted her wish.

Gradually, in the woman's pupils,
he discovered the gentle shadow fading away.
Had her eyes become fresh,
or had they grown old?
The woman grieved that she had grown old.
Laughing calmly, he—
"No—that had become new"—he said.

The moment he seized ownership of chastity
He had to shift to some new possession.
He had to shift.
But the foolish woman
What had been lost

Even after losing it,

She still believed in that ownership as if in a dream.

And in the lost reality,

what did the woman have left to take pride in?

She did not even harbor any new desires.

Within the embrace, only the men's

small desires—further still—

housed even smaller desires,

And also, the utilitarian man

from within these rings of desires

so that women's desires absolutely could not escape

loved with all manner of cunning.

He shivered.

Ah, history was a thief,

All great enemies were men of grand desires.
To defeat all enemies,
to rival them to such extent,
they must possess bottomless desires.
But history remains impassive,
and as for life's sea—
always calm like southern waters—
when he laid bare before those who crave purpose
the towering waves of raw desire's fury,

People all at once turned their eyes away from him.

Some looked on with resentment,
Some harbored a vague sense of displeasure.
When he spoke sternly,
The listeners covered their ears

They were imagining the slow collapse of sand,

When he pursued them relentlessly,
People obediently seemed to avoid his path,
When he cornered them, the people let out screams.
And wielding the greatest force against them,
he struck them with full force.
But what pitiable strength the people possessed!
Through that very fragility,

Barely weathering the waves of life,
shattering them into small fragments within their own dwellings—
had they been granting tranquility to their homes?
When he considered this, he found it absurd.
Simultaneously, his pity toward the weak
transmuted into a sensation of anguish.
There was no call to despise the frail,
yet he detested the boundaries of their wanting.
He had to validate the righteousness of his swelling tides of desire
through every conceivable means—
had to prove it beyond doubt.
That which is seized
need not always come from distant quarters—

even from those closest at hand
The act of seizing must never be avoided.
He took that matter—
he fiercely planned to carry it out.

He fiercely planned to carry it out.

As the benevolent leader,

As the benevolent leader, I

chew through unchewable ideologies

softly

break them down.

For patients, rice porridge.

For babies, wafers.

Leap up in shock at my words—
An ideology that remains uncomprehended
Is disgrace!
Silence!
A message from Marx,

Yesterday in the graveyard he

He tapped my shoulder and said this:
“—I should’ve explained the truth more simply—”

So I

I know nothing beyond a single

I answered in broken Russian,

--Tovarishch (comrade)

Marx (oh Marx)

Yaponskiy (Japanese people are)

Malinke (small)

Hodahoda (No good, no good)

He and I
He and I laughed in unison, "Ha ha!"
The character of the Japanese people
The grand ideology as vast as a thousand-league vista
The character of the Japanese people struggles to properly grasp this grand ideology spanning a thousand leagues.
The Japanese intellectual class
preaches ideology not to the proletariat
but for the sake of their digestive tracts—
Entering through the mouth
only to exit through the anus—
What an enormous waste of time and effort—
It takes—

“Good morning, Ms. Take.”

“Ms. Take,”

“Goodbye.”

Expel from the entrance
the parrot’s ideology of rote memorization
and the solemn monkeys’ shrill screams.

As the benevolent commander,
I rectified with pure words—
let us welcome the young new guests.

Poetry is the sugar coating,
passion the laxative.

With my kind, simple laughter
I cured people’s chills.

From on high

The Dragon Palace of the blue sea

The king of that Dragon Palace there

ordered to erect a tall watchtower
Suddenly issued a royal command to the fish architects.

“Your Majesty,
The fish citizens are suffering from the economic depression.
At present, such expenditures are
not what we consider appropriate.”

they advised.

“Architects,”
“No no—that isn't for my own pleasure—”
“It's absolutely not being built for that!”
“For my sons and daughters—”
“From atop the watchtower—the fish citizens'—”
“'Tis for showing the fish citizens' lives.”
“If my children—”
“Don't grasp their subjects' plight—”
“As a splendid Dragon King,”
“'Tis because they'll never become worthy successors.”

The architects prostrated themselves three times in abject humility.
The Dragon King's profound consideration—
Moved by this deep concern for his people,

And the tall watchtower

was built inside the castle.

The king’s adorable sons and daughters
climbed up there and looked down.
The children frolicked atop the watchtower.

“Oh look—over there—”
Behind the seaweed,
in filthy attire,
a peddler passed by.
“Oh look—over there—”

Beneath the coral tree,
The one who wept
What could it have been?
The bonito, tuna, and flying fish
The guards were in a great panic.
Within the range visible from the watchtower,

Harsh commands were issued to the residents:

“Entering the garden undressed is forbidden.”

――Drying infants' diapers is forbidden.

――Engaging in marital disputes outdoors is forbidden.

Anything that could be an eyesore to the Dragon King and his honorable sons―

anything that could be an eyesore

within the range visible from the watchtower,

doing so is forbidden.

Those who violate shall face severe punishment.

And beneath the watchtower,

the so-called public sentiment

The so-called social order was gradually systematized and sanitized.

However, for the king’s children,

It did not serve as any form of education.
Gradually had done so,

They moved away from beneath the watchtower.
They moved their dwellings to distant places.

Bullfighter

I am poetry's bullfighter,
a crowd-pleaser battling bulls,
I want to be flamboyant.
The people truly love poets,

But the reason poets until now were not loved was
because all poets were liars.

“Comrades, when the gong sounds—
march out together in formation!
Make a stylish exit,
in styles that cling to your individuality—

Carefully, boldly, and with sharp weapons in hand.

“Appear,
You sturdiest, most well-fed bastards!
We are not Don Quixotes battling windmills—
What we need is Don Quixote’s
indomitable spirit,
not the windmills he chose!
Choose—
You must select your enemies—
Not dead ones
but living ones—
Ah, the bull thirsts for blood from our very flesh—
It thirsts for blood!
We refuse
To protect our precious blood,
And we march out to fight.
Why would we—before raging bulls and the people—”

“Don’t even think you can pull off fixed matches or the like!”
We fought with all our might while sweating—
the very thing that most enraged our enemies—

Don’t cower when drawing it forth—
when you flip the crimson cape this way and that, closing in—
how to dodge those razor horns while

To defeat the opponent
is difficult—
consider whether technique is required.
Shestovian beer—
We will be scorned,
We will flaunt our foolishness,

At that time, we will surely not be gloomy,

Do that cheerfully,
When we are bold and fearless,

From out of nowhere,
A refreshing breeze rustled in,
Heart and body sprang like a ball.
The moment we disregarded morality,
We from the old ship—
It was when we leapt to the new ship,

Push off from the shore!
The ship filled with old morality

No matter how beautifully the river may flow,

In their eyes, it must appear as a foolish form—
We must let our nerves' sparks
like fireworks on the river
like gunpowder exploding in an instant
take joyous flight within us.

There is nothing that is not ambiguous.
You must believe it,
All things still remain in ambiguity—

If you truly despise ambiguity,
you must loathe and burn yourself out upon its very essence—
I seethe with hatred,
and still this hatred flows unbroken.
I would become
a monster sufficient to startle them.

I rather consider it an honor to become,
I—until my head is severed—
It seems I can keep singing,

When I moistened my throat,

the fate of beer—earnestly—

I have never earnestly considered it,

Perhaps that beer fellow was laughing at my drunkenness.
He might have been laughing.

But I always did it for my own sake—
calmly gulped down that bastard.
But my friend never did as I did.
He drank beer through Shestovian sorrow—
for him, that beer—
it probably didn’t count as drinking—
he must’ve spat it all out.
I existed to absorb objects

I was born into this world,
I employ such cheerful methods,
I consider them the proletarian's health method.
Therefore, I am drunk on truth
and must remain healthy.

Each had their role.

In a grand mansion—ten maids,
five student-lodgers,
as those student-lodgers would say,
our work was no mere trifle,

One student
Sat on the veranda from morning,
Dipped his brush into water again and again
To tend the master's beloved orchids—
The task of washing each leaf one by one with that brush.
He repeated this every day.

One maid had the task of selecting rice grains one by one—ensuring there were no insect-damaged grains, no chipped ones—selecting only perfectly round grains. Another maid spent three hours on that rice, scritch-scratching them into jewel-like perfection.

The task of polishing it into jewel-like perfection,

One maid,

Attended to the Chin dog's walks,
One student,
Attended to the young master,

Though called "young master"

A young master of twenty-three this year,

This big young master takes an air rifle in hand

When he runs around the grand garden

He carries the air rifle pellets

The role of following along with pellets balanced on one's hand,

Each has their role,

All roles auspicious,

Nothing but sorrowful roles.

Like proper human beings,

The freedom-loving clown

When the flute is taken from them,

Because they can't keep using their fingers,

I will blow, a whistle,

I’ll blow without restraint, regardless of where,

A shrill whistle—the whistle I blow,

I will disturb peaceful sleep,

O humanity,
Do not weep.
You with the tear-streaked face, you shameless slacker,
Do not be angry,

You who feign anger, you coward,

Now, now, let us begin,

Like my clown

Weep genuinely, rage genuinely,

Go on and truly confront them head-on,

Every last one of them

played at being proper human beings,

putting on airs in Western clothes and such,

It was absurd—they went on about how these could be worn and paraded around,

Twisting their bodies as they spewed curses,
When throats were pressed—
Splendid—the era’s groans and whispers—
Ladies and gentlemen, I wished to present,

And I, my own forehead
While striking my own forehead with my hands
In keeping with such an era,
First, from the self-criticism of striking my forehead—
I began the performance.

Sumo Association

To describe something large,

To describe something large, they said it was like the Kokugikan.

That place was truly massive, you see.

The vast dome stood hollow and empty.

To describe something powerful,

they said it was like the four pillars of sumo.

"Lock firmly into your four-pillar stance and face them!

Dewa no Seki,

Don’t cry.

The dwelling place fitting for you

There was truly nothing but the Kokugikan.

That you were so deeply convinced it brought tears—

It was only natural.

All the fickle

Among the spectators, I alone was your supporter and fan.
Dewa, don't cry.
Those massive, powerful things kept shaking violently—
a profession that involved falling down—
you should keep at it into the future.
Sumo too had welcomed new ideas.
Your comrades—
Tenryu Seki and thirty-odd others—

When cutting your hair into zangiri,

“Even if I go back to the village,
I eat four portions of rice,

"In this unprosperous village, I can’t make a living."

“If I lose my sumo job,”
“I’ll just die, I tell ya!”

You alone were granted special conditions,
The cutting of his topknot was permitted,
If cutting down people makes one a samurai,
The ones who eat rice are the sumo wrestlers,
A single bullet
When a single bullet falls softly from the sky,
Smoke rises over so many square meters,
Several square meters of concessions
When you gulp down your morning gruel
Four farmers are starving.
You are an unproductive sport, but
you entertain us,
But as a so-called inheritor of the national sport,

On Japan’s Food Problem

One would have expected there to be thoughts on this,

Musashino Seki
He resolved it individualistically.
He quit sumo and took up boxing.
He traded bulls for thoroughbreds.
He was somewhat shrewd.
And joined the ranks of bourgeois sports.
You wept with pure-heartedness
You clung eternally to your longing for sumo.
You—your mother bore you.

You must never resent your mother.

“You must remember—someday—the time of your departure from the village,”
“This child has such a fine physique—”
“He should take up sumo,”
“He should take up sumo in future—”

The village head and the rest of the villagers made an uproar,

“If only we’d made him a farmhand back then—
“If only we’d made him a waterwheel attendant instead—”

You must never resent your mother or the villagers.
You must never resent.

The village farmhands and waterwheel attendants,

Now they were thinking the exact opposite—

“If he had become a sumo wrestler,

he’d at least be able to eat gruel—”

But now, both sumo wrestlers and farmers

In that they could not eat gruel, it was all the same.
What remained now?

A vast plain where a great table was spread out

There lay canned goods and hardtack bread,
Rice and other foods were abundant,
If the village children sat at this table,
They needn't worry about eating,
All the nation's food provisions were here,
You, an undersized giant, had been exempted from military service,

On the meal plate

Suddenly, when bullets came raining down,
in the middle of a meal they flung aside their chopsticks—it was a charge into battle.
But as for the rice left behind,
how many would return to eat?
You, even regarding the hardships of the village youths,
you—the topknot upon your head—
I thought it was okay for you to feel gratitude toward that topknot.
As one of your patrons, I wanted to advise:
you, lately in sumo matches—
your fighting spirit had vanished,
to keep from falling and injuring yourself,
focusing solely on avoiding that.
They said you were being cautious and quick to take your stance.
The rumors were rampant.

Let those who spread rumors do as they will.

With that strange obstinacy of yours,

do not force yourself into unnatural falls.

The larger your body, the greater your injuries will be.

Don't get injured and make your mother worry.

The Association will never let you—

Since they likely won't dismiss you, you can rest assured.

You must stand on the sumo ring.

For the sake of your popularity among elementary schoolers too,

if you don't by all means show your grand figure,

because the little fans probably wouldn't accept it.

You have transcended matches,

In other words, you have entered the true way of sumo.

There is no such thing as a quiet forest in this world.

I was released from the detention center.
I was visibly and rapidly losing weight.

I laid out bedding in the room.

And there, like a corpse left frozen in the posture of being hurled face-first,
I lay utterly still and slept for days on end.
Yet my mind refused to settle,
could find no calm—

I had many friends I wanted to meet soon.

Things Inside the Detention Center
A half-read book

To the window came an intense reflection of sunlight.

I restlessly left my bedding

I went out to the woods in the suburbs.

In the woods, nameless small birds were chirping.

—The chatty ones,

In the grass thicket were insects,

--seemingly invisible small insects,

There I stood in the woods,

I muttered toward the trees of the woods.

――O woods, O nature,

I stood by your side—
How I must have longed to come—

I stepped away from the fight for a time,

In your quiet embrace,

I wanted to be embraced,

O woods,

I love quiet places,

I came to your presence.

You remained so still that not a single leaf fell,

so still that none dropped—

Stay still,
Grant me quietness
At that moment, the wind began to roar.

The wind blew through the woods.

Various subtle sounds

grew chaotic and noisy,

And the sounds of the woods said thus to me:

—The kind of quiet woods you speak of—

Such a quiet woods as you describe—

In this world, such a thing probably does not exist——.

I reflected.

Amid the intensifying struggle,
Why had I fled to the woods' stillness—
Why had I come—
Ah, if what I seek—

If I were to search for a quiet place—
——In that case, it would be death—
In the woods—for hanging oneself—

There were many suitable branches,

Also, to strike my head against—

There was a tree perfectly suited for the task, hard and unyielding.

O dreadful cowardice of the spirit!

The fatigue of battle,

Physical frailty,

All my non-proletarian aspects,

It dragged me into the woods.

—Death must be the greatest quiet place,

The treetops rustled,

The wind blew through the trees,

The noise of the distant city could be heard.
Here too, there was not a shred of tranquility.

Wherever he looked,

There was a small creature,
These insects were incessantly
They were moving with purpose toward some entity’s aim,
Looking up, there—
There was a sky—there were clouds.
The wind was blowing through each and every leaf with deliberate care,
I muttered involuntarily

――As quickly as possible―sweep away this worthless―

Sweep away this heart that seeks peace,
The moon of this month and tonight
In the human world,
Are they trying to kill me?
Are they trying to keep me alive,

What are they trying to do,
Or are they saying it's all up to my own discretion,
Someone quickly—sweep away my sorrow
Bring me a dustpan.
The consumption of life
With that, scoop it up
To distant places, deep into the woods.
To the very edge of the sea,
To where humans aren't watching,

To where only the moon gazes upon me,

Go discard it.

And I was cast aside,

Young yet flung onto Obasute Mountain—

If I look up, it's the same month and night as two years ago—

This moon—

Possessed by politics, I carried leaflets—

I wandered along the water's edge,
And I—not like Kan'ichi—
Like Omiya, was kicked aside by politics with a boot.
Now no matter how much time I spend

Even if I were crying,
Even if I were screaming,
I could still mutter complaints.
I could even stride boldly past police boxes—
This kind of freedom
is such a troublesome thing.
Have we forgotten—
Me, you—
We remain still—
We are poets of agitprop,

That we must be poets of agitprop.

Quickly, quickly,

O delicate nerves,
Get away from the shallows and head out to open water,
Quickly, quickly,
Tear off the headache plaster from my temples,

When my body has warmed in Chujo-yu,

O man, to the woman-like man,
bid farewell,
alive yet,
like becoming sashimi,

Lying prostrate from life’s hardships
In the sheer absurdity of remaining utterly still
Someone pour soy sauce over me—
And so I exploded.

Old Castle

――A Salon Sunk to the Lake’s Depths――Rimbaud

1

I emerged from between the high-rise buildings.

Into an open area—

At the tram stop stood people dressed in various outfits.

People’s heads looked like tilted bags.

With life’s fatigue and sorrow,
It was like azuki bean bags rustling,
A beggar passed by,
He dragged long rags along the ground,
He crossed the tram tracks.

He emerged into an area where the old castle came into view.
He stood there motionless by what encircled the castle,
gazing at the surface of old green water.
What had moved him?
Or perhaps he had been struck by some foreboding?
The beggar shuddered violently and suddenly raised his face.
Then like an office worker recalling unfinished business,
he began walking unsteadily,

At that moment, I too was gazing at the old water.

Facing the beggar's retreating figure—
—Humility is a beggar’s first duty—
I uttered those words.

And in my heart, I muttered,
Beggar, all citizens are—
They are humble like you—and obedient,

In this way, I surveyed the wide grassland.
When I saw the distant stone gate

I shuddered as if I had lost my standing as a human,
All human souls sink into tranquil landscapes,
Like a line from the poet Rimbaud's verse—

From the direction of the station,

The wind blows gently, rustling.

The green-tinged beauty of

It sweeps swiftly over the water's surface,

The wind sweeps over the water's surface and the waterfowl floating upon it,

The wind collides with stones piled high,

The wind refracted sunlight,
The stone wall shone; the water too shone; even the wind shone,
The watching human’s heart reflected too,
A chaotic tangle of light—a flickering whiteness—
Like two blades vying to outsharpen each other—
What did not shine
Was a group akin to beggars who knew naught but wandering,
They were humble; thus they reacted to nothing,

They absorbed everything， attempting to take it all in．

They couldn’t do it—

They threw anything， even tasks they’d started， onto the mud．

If a giver did not appear，

they threw their own things．

They picked them up themselves and were enjoying it．

2

I cannot leave this place.
I shall never leave that place.

Just as Earth’s astronomers

the Sirsis Major Canal and the like,

Mare Akidarium Lake and the like,

just as they attached various names to Mars,

I assigned names to old castles, to old waters, to old stone walls,

I took pleasure in assigning names through my own method.

The distant tales of old castles

To narrate from nearby places——
Conversely, the recent events of the old castle
I must narrate from distant places——
I know these two contradictions are a tragedy.

My heart and eyeballs
like an astronomer’s objective lens
were experiencing the tragedy of distance—

3

The beautiful surroundings
I surveyed the beautiful surroundings with eyes that burned like embers.
My gaze collided with the stone and bounced back,
The gaze that once collided

It returned once more into the eyes,

What madness—this act
It was performed to return to its original position
People lament futile efforts and powerlessness

They wasted day and night, every moment,
Within a dream, they layered more dreams upon it,
A single living ghost
Sat atop a lacquered box adorned with decorations,
The box was filled with a legacy called “History”,

Thousands upon thousands of living ghosts

Clamoring and surrounding its periphery,

The ghosts all wore expressions like those of exiles,

Their frozen hearts would sometimes try to melt under strong impacts,

Only to be struck by cold fiercer than before,

Their hearts never melted even when spring arrived,

Four

The old-fashioned castle stood white-walled and beautiful,

A countless good-natured crowd occasionally crossed before me.

I stared blankly at the crowd of people.

The procession advanced sluggishly like a centipede.

My eyes were fixed on the center of the circle.

I find the scenery there beautiful——,
I think all that is strong is beautiful——,
If not—then it must either be beautiful to the point of ugliness, one or the other,

The procession donned Noh masks and burst into dance.
From between the pine trees, the sound of a flute resonated.
With submissive postures, the people danced.

When they finished dancing, the people removed their masks.
They tore the flesh-adhering masks from their faces.

5

To the waterfowl floating without a trace of fear,

I hurled a stone at them,
playing upon classical beauty,
birds taking strolls across history’s smile,
seeing their carefree daily life,

I felt something akin to jealousy,
But waterfowl, forgive,
I threw a stone at you and startled you,
I should not have shown human bravado,

O waterfowl,
You—me, this human being—
Or rather—consider what sort of creature the general human being is—
You would understand that humans are beings developed from spermatozoa,

And yet, more than the distinction between waterfowl and humans—
The distinctions between fellow humans are even more severe,

I have a friend.
He possesses wisdom,
yet persists in living more simply than spermatozoa—
maintaining an existence pared down further still.

Half-naked under the scorching sun,

From Point A to Point B

His life consisted solely of carrying and moving luggage, repeating this endlessly.
He stroked his body with a living hand to verify.
And he muttered that he was indeed alive.

However，he had not yet lost his ideals.
He had not abandoned making comparisons between fellow humans，

He was strong and a righteous man.
He went to Asakusa to watch a magic show.
From his seat among spectators, he spotted cheating.
He leapt onto the stage.
And he dragged out that magician from within his stone trunk!

Courage has not yet been completely lost,

But waterfowl, you there on the water—
That I threw a stone at you
Does not count as courage.
The old castle has no connection to my friend's world,
Belonging to a realm entirely foreign to him.
But for me—
For me who loves the classics—
It appears beautiful to the eye.

The stories from within dreams
When I come to this area, I recall
What eternity is
I understand what peace is
A single cloud above the castle
Appeared to be preparing a thousand clouds
The nature around here was utterly beautiful

I recalled beauty and nature's manifold varieties,

I am possessed by fury.

With splendid humility,

let us celebrate the deserting masses.

They do not possess great secrets.

They are inferior to dogs and beasts.

With cheerfulness,

or enjoying their seemingly pained expressions

Utterly simplistic.

The crowd of psychologistic thinkers
had now been pushed into a marginal position in life.
They looked back
with not a shred of composure
in the flow of time,
abandoning themselves to retreat.
What kind of role had their education
fulfilled?
Had they not merely spewed out
hundreds and thousands of words rationalizing retreat
in rapid succession—

“Workers,”

Believe in my actions.

For their sake, ×× and compose poems more cruel than—

Today, writing furiously,

The nature of my love

[The nature of my love—] clad in raiment never before seen in this land,

clad in new raiment

the fact that it has appeared,

Upon their burns
I dripped vinegar onto them.
I watched intently
though they were poor -
fury had possessed me
I had long since entered the war of revenge
since I had entered

This cruelty is unavoidable.

Our Consumer Cooperative

We must protect our Consumer Cooperative; we must constantly—

We must keep our guns trained on the supply routes.

The institution of the ××-style Consumer Cooperative

Before our strike

They had amply prepared provisions for us.

When we kicked off the struggle,

They did the brave work of the logistics corps for us.

From there, rich lather

We did not seek soap,
Nor demand sharp razors,
Nor ask for such things.
Our necessities—
The goods for struggle—
All bourgeois luxuries
We kicked aside,
And received rations of essentials for our fight.
By supporting the consumer cooperative as we fought,
We multiplied and intensified our struggle manifold.
Even obtaining a single product from the cooperative—

This carried crucial significance,

The women at the kitchen entrance became defenders against middlemen exploitation by merchants. When labor disputes arose, the men had to have a consumer cooperative and a joint countermeasures committee. Aligning their steps, they concentrated their struggle. The trickery of commercial capital and,

The relationship between imperialist wars and prices.

The sham of the Dara-kan Industrial Cooperative.

Through the consumer cooperative, they peeled away all the enemy's lies and tricks,

Exposing while fighting and fighting while exposing.

There, beneath the moon,
black steel frameworks towered upward as far as one could see.

Soviet Russia.

A country of workers and farmers.

The place where nightingales sang at night.

There, the All-Russia Consumer Cooperative Central Committee and

its subordinate organizations

how vigorously and tenaciously they were working,

The mere thought of it

Our backs shivered,
and we thrilled with courage.
We had to make our Nisshoren thrive like theirs—
our country's Nisshoren
must flourish as theirs did.

Those coddled upstart writers—
to an already terrifying reality
they added more layers:
"Abandon your duties as husbands and write novels!
Let them sleep clutching their five-hundred-page tomes each night—
to pen a single poem,
a family of five might starve for a month—so be it."

Doh, doh, dara-ri, doh, dara-ri, doh...

The Sanbasō in eboshi headdress
With critics as their attendants,
When would this new vanguard ever grace the stage?
Just how many—
This one being Japan's Panferov—
Had ever truly emerged before?
Quick to rise,
Quicker still to retreat—such were this nation's writers.

The recommendations of established authors—
How fleeting the critics’ guarantees were!
How short-lived credit proved!
Readers’ expectations turned immediately to disappointment—
Under the pretext of rural surveys
That nostalgic yearning for home—
How many writers swift as arrows—
Wasn’t this precisely the case?
To question whether literature could be a man’s lifelong work—
To nurture doubts—
To begin doubting only after starting a novel—
By then it was too late—
No harm in declaring:

Question before you embark on literature,
And then—will you become a writer,
Or will you promptly grab your briefcase
And just go become an insurance salesman?
You can’t approach literature like playing mahjong—
Since you can’t handle literature,

If you dare lay claim to it -
Since you presume to call yourself a proletarian writer -
Plant yourself resolutely in the executioner's seat.

Behind you stood an executioner’s assistant—
a flash of violet lightning—
the merits and demerits of your work
would be discarded not by
rigged criticism
nor journalism.
The true executioner would be none other than the people themselves.
"You pitifully pampered up-and-coming writers,"
with heads packed full of gelatin—
the works you crafted
through this so-called ideology—
your unchaste creations
were made not to be read by readers,
but to be violated.