Pathway to Japanese Literature

Epistle

The rain fell pitter-patter.
A transparent rain fell through fragmented flickers of mental imagery.
What got wet were horsetails and docks,
the cypress's hair had grown too long.

My chest cavity is dark and hot,
I think it might have already started fermenting.

On this side of the rain-soaked green embankment,
a rubber-coated slate-blue cloak
moved so very slowly—
this was truly a painful thing.
Where are you now?
Already in this yellowed shadowy space to my right,
can you stand straight?
The rain had grown even more piercing and stronger.
Was there not a child chewing?
Over there, that man made gurgling sounds in his throat.
Now I intended to step out into the corridor.

I beg you to walk back and forth with me just ten times.
With those gigantic bare feet of white radiance,
that cold board over there,
please tread on it with me.
(1922/5/12)

[The stiff jeweled necklaces hang straight down.]

[No opening manuscript]

The stiff jeweled necklaces hang straight down.

Truly flashing and glittering, that creature came falling down.

Truly, these celestial beings'

sorrowful cries—more transparent than hydrogen—

Did you not hear them somewhere, sometime?

Did you not?

That cry of the ice spear piercing straight through heaven—

You must have heard it.

But even if you hear about those who fall,

Or those people desperately gulping down bitter brine

While drowning—

To you now,

It would only sound like a pitiful tale of foolish mortals.

Or perhaps you must find them only slightly unusual.
But merely having thought that way and—
But when you truly bite into that water—
It’s completely, completely different.
It is hotly cold—utterly,
bitter to the point of being tasteless
It is heartrendingly sad to the point where the bluish-blackness pierces through.
The people who fell there all cry out.
Could it be that I have fallen into this lake?
Or has falling ever occurred?
That is indeed so—who would believe it from the start?

Even so, I do finally come to believe.
And I grow even sadder.

The reason I told you these things now—

Not to prevent you from falling,

but for falling and swimming through to the end.

Everyone sees, and what's more,

the strongest people fall through their own volition.

Then they soar together with others because...

(1922/5/21)

Kuriyagawa Station

(It’s already completely evening.)

Though what billowed appeared as shards from beer bottles,

they brimmed instead with cider-wine.

(Well then, goodbye.)

The gravel was from the Kitakami Mountain Range,

(Oh, I left my cloak in the train car.

(I was completely engrossed in conversation.)

(That's a famous socialist.

He's been hauled in several times in Tokyo.)

His hair was neatly parted,

even though he was not yet twenty,

that aged appearance making him look thirty and the pinstripe of his tie.

(Um, excuse me,

a tattered satin cloak,

I left it on that train.)

(Which car number?)………

"(Only the car in front of second class, huh.)"

Larix, Larix, Larix,

Sprouted blue short needles,

The sunset now filled the sky with beer,

Softly rustling here and there,

Tattered and frayed into strings that wailed.

(1922/6/2)

Aomori Elegy III

Within the haze of undissolved dozing silicic acid

From the cold window glass
The scent of apple near dawn
Became a transparent cord flowing in.
Its surface was a monad of nephrite and silver
Because it filled with gas the half-moon had emitted
To the very depths of the cirrocumulus clouds' core,

The moonlight permeates.

It becomes an eerie phosphorescent panel,

it increasingly emits an eerie scent or light,

It even crosses over the smooth, hard glass.

It was not because it was Aomori—
generally when the moon hung near dawn like this,
whether entering cirrocumulus clouds
or lingering undissolved in blue sky,
it becomes an inevitable phenomenon.
When I rose in the night train car,
nearly all were asleep.

The middle seat on the right side
The pale dawn’s peacock feathers
What bears this tender grassy-hued dream
Toshiko—it looks like you.
“There really are spitting images,”
“at Hōryūji Station”
“in the passing train”
“a complete spitting image of the kid.”
Father had said that one morning.

And I too was like that.

In the December following her death,

yeast-like fine snow

Through the fierce, fierce blizzard,

I ran down the slope from school.
Before Yanagizawa Tailor Shop's glass turned pure white,
in that indigo evening snow mist,
I encountered a woman in a black cloak.
Her eyes lay hidden beneath the hood.

A white jaw and beautiful teeth.

She even appeared to smile slightly in my direction.

(That is of course due to the refractive index relationship between wind and snow.)

I nearly cried out.

(What? No—saying she died

as if declaring it sufficient,

she's walking around here right now, isn't she.)

And certainly I must have shouted that again.

But because it was such a fierce blizzard,

the voice was snatched by the wind.

I began to scatter into the wind.

“In the large house commanding a view of the Pacific Ocean,

when you were lying on your back asleep

saying “Hey, hey, hey, hey”

“The policeman kept waking you up.”

That wrinkled, loose white uniform

Last night all night under your light,

the high school teacher who had come over and sat down

"When we arrive in Aomori,

are you saying you'll eat apples?"

The sea glowed indigo.

There are no bright red apples at this time.
If that apple in its crisp apple-blue hue—
That must surely have been created by now.

(August 1, 1923)

Tsugaru Strait

From summer's thinness emerged frozen chalcedony clouds.

Zinc-sheathed waves stretched from the white-lit horizon.

Across teak decks freshly scoured by tides,

the crowd kept shuffling back and forth.

If it were that journey from when I was in fourth year of middle school,

The smoke created the shadow of an arsenic mirror upon the waves.

It flowed straight back.

Not a single seagull is visible today.

(If not due to the weather, then for food,

Actually, the ice of the Bering Strait

This year they still haven’t all melted

(The cold current has already reached that area.)

Though the opposite mountain lay sunken and dark in mouse-gray,
the water brimmed excessively white,
even small black fishing boats were moving.
(The field of vision was excessively bright—
it’s one of those Brownian motions.)

Until now, you all with your pointed Panama hats and companions shuffling along the deck in stiff wheat straw—we ate apples and discussed genetics, but I couldn’t maintain such associations indefinitely. Now the sail ropes pulled taut, the waves shifted to deep Berlin blue. At the white lighthouse on the cape, alongside the fading sun and faint rainbow, signals descended from other directional systems. Where does that whistling call originate?

I am now at the base of my mental landscape’s atmospheric sphere.
I cross through Tsugaru Strait.

The ship swayed slightly left and right.
The pencil’s shadow moved swiftly.
Sunlight poured down without sound.
Those three seagulls—
Their cries were lost among the waves.

Their fluttering was erased by light.
(The lighthouse lay already ravaged by heaven’s net.)
Ahead—a blackened tapered tail,
a sleek untrodden spine—
what breached through waves’ curvature,
became piscine contemplation’s vessel.
Within pewter-hued penumbra,

On the opposite second-class deck
The crew member in the pale yellow uniform
Was indeed smiling faintly.
He was waiting for my question.

The dolphin was black and slick.
A seagull followed along, crying mournfully.
The dolphin leapt up from the water.

That absurd black cone

The fin appears as a motionless hand.
It forms an arc and falls back into the tidewater.

(It's beautiful, first-rate tidewater.)

When it enters water, it glides through water.

Signals and such—all lies.

I had never known such seemingly enjoyable ship voyages,
knowing only Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture
and Koishikawa’s Sekizenryo—
just those two places—
you who went away to some different realm,

How sad it makes me.

“That’s the same as a whale.”
“It’s a mammal.”

Beneath the exhaust stack painted walnut-color,
when sitting there basking in sunlight,
I was an Indian immigrant.

The middle school student, pale from seasickness—
an older brother attending a slightly larger school
and led staggering by their cousin—

When I closed my eyes,
counterfeit pink transmissions came anew from the sky.

In the cabin of the second-class deck’s

On the smoothly gleaming white wall
A black-veiled Catholic nun

Casting green round eyes into the void,
she used a woven bamboo rod.

And then a sailor-uniformed crew member came wiping the brass handrail.
(August 1, 1923)
Komagatake

Stretching up into a pallid white sky,

that bold swelling of volcanic gravel

The parts carved black were old portions of what had melted.

(Things like arbor zones, shrub zones, bryophyte zones—

It is entirely a matter of chance.
(3,650 shaku)

Now upon that ocher rock summit

A wisp of lenticular cloud hung.

(In the good summer time, In the good summer time;)

｟Look.

The foothills of that ocher mass

became a beautiful grove with gentle slopes,

and a yellow forest road also ran through them.
｠

“What in the world has happened to this sea’s color?”
“It’s not blue—it looks such a strange color.”
“Yes, that’s because of the clouds.”
What do clouds have to do with it?
When the atmospheric pressure’s this high.

Asahikawa

In such a small colonial-style carriage

The pleasure of riding alone early in the morning

“Please take me to the Agricultural Experiment Station.”

“Rokujō 13-chōme.”

The horse’s bell rings; the driver clicks his tongue.

The black cloth sways exactly like an October wind.

A column of mounted orderlies leading horses,

This chance-met horse is a Hackney.

The mane sways like fire.

The soothing quality of the carriage’s vibrations.

This black cloth slipped past.
I need to pull harder.

Such a small agile horse
From early morning I dashed through the town.
That would certainly lead to supreme enlightenment.
If we turned at Rokujō now
Oh larches, larches, and then the blue-quivering poplars
They did an excellent job developing this area.
A row of colonial-style government housing and Asahikawa Middle School
The carriage roof was yellow and red striped.
Truly Gypsy-like
Such a small carriage
Who would say they didn’t want it?

Two horseback riders approached.

The sky was coldly white.

This person bared white teeth and laughed.

Weeping willows, broad plantains, nailworts.

All were filled with cold morning dew.

Sōya Elegy

On this night deck where no one remained,
(Even the rain was falling a little,
If I were to attempt crossing the strait—the beauty of pitch-black darkness—
Might I not fall into the waves or be flung into the sky?)

That appeared to form no such chain of causality.

Yet had Toshiko passed through midnight,

If she were to call me from somewhere,

I would of course fall.

There is no reason for Toshiko to call me.

She is where there is no need to call.

If that were not the case—

(that radiant garment with elegant pleats,

wearing a thin purple thing,

even though she ascended straight up—)

if that were not the case,

why would I not go with her?

The black shadows of the sailors,
of water and the small ship’s lamp,
in the faint light came and went.

Indeed, someone went up to the upper deck.
The ship would probably depart soon.
Wakkanai’s streetlights stood in a straight line.
The shadows of the lights weren’t reflected in the water.

The shadows of those lights do not reflect in the water.
On the gunwale dampened by sea breeze and fog

That shadow was an elderly, reliable sailor.
He stood scrutinizing me.
The fog came sloshing down.

The small electric light on the sail rope just shifted.

That eerily lit bow light,

Indeed, the fog was sloshing down everywhere.
Rather than falling, it was welling up and rising.
The blue rods of light formed by illumination
like submicroscopic particles beneath a superlative microscope
were rushing ceaselessly onward.
(Nemuro’s sea temperatures and those off Kinkasan
bore a striking resemblance to the Taisho 2 curve.)
The shadow of the sail rope fell on the wet deck.

The same gong that had sounded during the Tsugaru Strait crossing now began to ring.

Someone passed through the corridor before the lower cabin.

The gong was being skillfully polished.

The pencil had worn down remarkably quickly.

It had frayed before I could apply the penknife.

A sturdy-looking red-bearded man approached,

stood beside me, and due to his shadow,

the pencil lead snapped cleanly.

“Quit using this pencil.”
“Just don’t throw it into the sea.”
“Put it away in the yellow pocket.”
The fog grows even denser,
my nape gets wet.
A young sailor in a pale yellow uniform came running happily.

“It’s started raining.”
“Yess.”
“What’s this ‘Yess’?”

“It’s raining—the rain’s coming down.”
“Gas I tell you! Fog—this here’s fog.”

Toshiko, exactly as I have been thinking—
If you can now go on without being troubled by your own matters—
If there is no such happiness—

Therefore, the path that we intend to take,

If this Path were not genuine—
then muster all courage within your power,
in that separate space beyond my perception—

Break through those various obstacles enveloping you and come inform me. If this path we believe in and intend to take proves mistaken—if it fails to reach ultimate happiness—come straight to me now and let me know. Should our pursuit of everyone’s true happiness require it... Even sealed within this pitch-dark sea as we are now... We must never lament.
(Is your absence here due to Tanta Jīru’s door? Would even that mock both you and me?)

(That would mock both you and me.)

The whistle sounded from the direction of the ship’s hull.

On the upper deck, they responded to it.
Would that be the steamship's courtesy?
Or perhaps, from being a ferry,
Might it follow train etiquette?

The fog now grows ever denser.

Through the blue light of the sidelight
How exquisitely it falls
The lights of Wakkanai begin to shift

The ship indeed begins to move.
This sky is Hiroshige’s graded wash in pale ink.
The waves undulate, the steam whistle roars deep and deeper still.

Could this man not be the captain?

(Do they think I'm suicidal?)

The fact that I am not a suicide

It can be immediately understood from the following points.

First: One who would commit suicide—
Disliking the falling fog,
Would they be wearing a blue cloth or something?

Second: One who would commit suicide—
Would they carefully sharpen two pencils,
those approaching with such suspicion,
and sneer in the fog?)

Within the whistle’s night sky,
this hemp rope properly stretched across

It was both beautiful and noble.

The electric lights here and there were gradually being turned off.

The crew members return in good spirits.

The northern edge of Wakkanai town.

Directly before me, a light welled up from the sea.

It would vanish again soon—sound the whistle, sound it!

The fire burns again.

“Is that a lighthouse over there?”

“Yes, it is.”

The man from before came over again.

I had better say something to this person after all.

“Is that a lighthouse over there?”

“No, that is a flare signal.”

“I see.”

“There are warships astern as well, you know, exchanging greetings here and there as they depart.”

“exchanging greetings here and there as they set out.”

“The reason they don’t keep them lit all the time is,

[Several manuscript pages missing here]”

May you all crawl upon the earth forever.

Come, sea and clammy night sky and demonic deities

I will accept the trial.

(1923/8/2)

Free Art Certification Committee Member

How about this—this here is Kamchatka.

The house pillars and eaves were all dyed pink.

Migratory birds swirled upward like trash in the sky,

The power lines stretched with audacious simplicity.

O children dashing across sun-hued mountains,

Verdigris pines too raced across the hills.

This one was already a genuine grand electric pole,

The insulators rumbled too,

A blurred red bullfinch too perched.

The moon bears earthshine.

When cuckoos flew past,
the house’s chimney belched black smoke.
Hey now, hey now, hey now, hey now.

What a splendid tunnel!

From the peaceful ultramarine mountains hazed over,

Abruptly and with a roar, the railroad tracks surged forth.

They spread out all at once right before my eyes.

Birds were flying about in great numbers,

In the fields were dandelions and Chinese milk vetch and such.

It was as if a carpet had been laid.

From the moon flowed aniline pigment.

The sky turned strangely red.

The three black volcanic necks

As night fell, each desolately emitted its rust.
In the rice fields, small pine trees grew thickly.
Along the yellow T-shaped boulevard
The dark figure walked along, hair slapping wetly, swinging their arms grandly.
When birds cawed and flew
When pure white snow fell again.
Everyone emerged onto the surface of the ice
They dearly loved to play games.
When birds cawed and flew
When pure white snow fell again.
The wan evening sky—

Everyone rides in a line on wan rabbit-horses
across the field where golden roses glitter and shine
They traverse together with a dog.

The wan evening sky—
Everyone rides in a line on wan rabbit-horses