Pathway to Japanese Literature

Table of Contents

On a Clear Day

Song of the Wilderness

I am forced――

Frozen Valley

New World Kino

On the Country Road

Midday Rest

Returnees

Same Envoy

In a Cold Place

Sea Bathing

Elegy for My Self

Quiet Xenia

Chant

April Wind

Improvisation

The water rail comes walking the entire path without flying.

Chant

Memories of Ariake Sea

(By an unknown poet)

Let me call that smiling person

Hospital Patients' Song

Go, to the depth of your sorrow

Song of the Riverside

Wandering

Rather, they sang of my today.

Nightingale

(By an unknown poet)

Dedicated to my old teachers and few friends

On a Clear Day

On those rare days when the sky cleared completely

My aged mother

She had been compelled to return to her hometown,

my wandering half—you who are loved,

I must tell you:

Not everyone may dwell where they wish.
To dwell remains unpermitted.
Your distant letter—

For a time, you remained upstream on the Chikuma River,
having arrived,

When April ended,
In the surrounding mountains and even the village roads,
One meter of snow
Still remained within the sunlight.

You waited for May.
Cherry blossoms bloomed—and behind them you saw a proper apple orchard!
You sent word saying,
To be loved,
however you were commanded to exist.
In the hometown where we were young together,

By April you already wore a wide-brimmed hat
And the glittering sun and
soil where walking barefoot was difficult
After all, only vivid blue fruits could be hoped for.
That you planted variant apple trees!
I can pinpoint.

The one commanded to exist—my wandering half-body
What exactly was there—
that which you were desperately striving not to believe
what it was—

Song of the Wilderness

For my beautiful day when I shall die
O dreams of the mountain ranges!
Thy white snow

May it not melt

In this suffocating rarefaction's wilderness

I passed by an unseen spring.

Untimely fruits ripened

I passed by the hidden place

The token of flowers I sowed

The approaching day—the horse that would drag my corpse

This milestone shall guide us back.

Ah, thus my eternal homecoming—

Noble one, I send off your white light

Fruits aglow, the spring laughed...

O my painful dream—now at last this moment

Let us rest!

I was forced—

I was forced—these eyes that saw the fields and

clouds and forest glades

making my former lover walk

And O dead father—where in the sky
The spring water surging upward
Does it become a distinct drop?
Gaze out with me
O you who imparted solitary contemplation to me!
The herbivores' seemingly joyful meal

Frozen valley
One writhes in anguish, hands raised
How the distant waves menace!
The tree-dwelling bird lies shot down
Taking mystic airs
Still spinning endless songs
Noble in melancholy, quick to freeze
A valley freezing in an instant
Brittle summer echoes away…
The scent wanders bewildered

Crimson flowers
(So willfully!)
O striations in gloom's abyss!
Upon my infant's toes

This walking is pleasant

Lagging behind in escape, inverted

The frozen fish's pale blue

The piercing spines—

Pain!
How exquisite instead!

Shinsekai's Kino

He was en route from Tokyo to Korea on a job transfer.
An old friend alighted in my town.

Including me, three classmates were in this town.

The time I received his call was
when my attendants were operating in Shinsekai.

It was at Kino.

From the office desk I took out my business cards from before being registered into my adoptive family.

When I found them, I wrote the banquet arrangements on them.

I notified the other two.

At the hotel where we four were to gather

That day I went first.

The terrace was cool despite the fan having stopped.

At the fountain, children who had sneaked in from outside
A rubber fish
They floated upon the water's surface of my mental draft

“A comfortable exile,” he spat out.

As my old friend brought it up, I pretended not to hear a single word.

Unusually, I began talking with him about Korea between coughs.

Myself included, the four of us—

I watched us gradually grow more cheerful.

(In Shinsekai, those who entered without believing in a single Kino—

Even they, confronted with the darkness I'd decreed—

How irritably they tried adjusting—

They must have been rubbing their eyes!)

They sang and laughed like high school students again.

And finally, in front of the bellboy,
a boisterous "Toast!"
they proclaimed.

The old friend who remained alone at the hotel—he was what must always exist at friendship's inception—intensely regretted having performed that Korea-related role. The two classmates headed toward their respective homes, deliberately proceeding on foot for a while as they felt invigorated for the first time in ages through pitying the old friend.

On the Country Road

The sunlight falls unnervingly clear
It falls upon the country road I walk along.
And nature all around
Why does it show not the slightest recognition toward me?
The dead woman over there
She remains far livelier than I am.

Otherwise why is my chest so—
Why like a brass basket?
That which I never played with—
The monotonous sound of my toys
And then after my adventure
Why does this nameless experience never cease?

Midday Rest

Sleeping in the shade of the wooden fence,

The shepherd was in deep rest...

Entrusting to the sun's pursuit,

They reached the swift spring in herd-like formation.

Thus I too took my seat

At the windowsill where second flowers bloomed scarce

I gradually fell behind the earth's breathing.

The shepherd roused from slumber

He encountered his own sun and beast.

He departed toward the promised path…

At the windowsill where second flowers bloomed scarce

I still sat thus.

Returnees

Nature was infinitely beautiful; its residents were perpetually impoverished. Time and again, violently repeating—after crashing against the rocks—the waves scattered into foam as they receded, each one muttering under their breath. I had watched this at the coast. The returnees I constantly saw here were exactly like that. That strangely uniform soliloquy struck no chord with me; it sounded utterly commonplace. (Honestly! Now there's nothing beautiful left in our hometown.)

Why (now)!

The beautiful hometown
That this was their truly futile task
The praises of countless ancient poems proved
Once, within this nature,
that the residents had lived as beautifully as that
I could not believe
After all their many complaints and hardships,
Composedly, all of them
that they had each become a grave there

That they had each become a grave there comforted me and made me somewhat happy.

Same Envoi

I who fled the countryside—O city,
How could I ever dare find peace with you?
I who came to know poetry—O action,
How could I not yearn for you?

In a cold place
I loved
Therefore, to me—to the one who brings pain—

The sun makes me happy.
Believe in the far reaches of unknown wilds.

And
Let pure white flowers bloom in my repose
The ancient ones' unbearable—
I walked too far with songs of homesickness

This rough cold rock's
It was precisely in this rough cold rocky place

Sea Bathing

This summer was especially hot—the whole town had gathered at the coast.
The area around the municipal free changing room was always packed.
And mischievous youth group members
lured pickpockets and roamed along the coast.
In the town, however, there existed a group that did not go sea bathing.
Among that group were those who refused to forgive me.
Malicious rumors were spread.

(All prominent poets abandoned this town)

An Elegy for My Person

The sun shone beautifully

At times wishing for its beautiful radiance,

With hands tightly clasped

Tranquilly we walked on.
No matter what these luring things may be,
within our
I believe in the alluring purity.

Even if the person without ties—

Birds sang eternally unchanged,
Even if the whispers of plants and trees made no division of time,

Now we listen
With the posture of our will
To those hymns of boundless vastness

Ah, my person
The soundless void infiltrates
this radiant sunlight -
the invention of eyes that distinctly perceive

What shall I become?

Unlike anything—I climbed a mountain devoid of human presence,

Using this sun we so ardently longed for,

To make it illuminate the entire surface of a lake that had nearly died.

Quiet Xenia (My Friend's Monologue)

To my detached actions, if someone thinks to write Xenia—

But I can write Xenia.
And that desire—

I am one who harbors hope.
The more serious I am

to—

That being said, the Xenias addressed to me by various people—
I did not fear them at all.
I too, being of that mind,

(Even more scathingly) directing it at them—
Because I could.
Yet since I cherish tranquility, that partial—
From Xenias inciting the mob with their skewed force, I had to shield myself,
I had to shield myself.
Thus only one method remained to me.
It was

It is to direct Xenia to myself by myself.

Within those Xenias, I act with utmost composure,
I conduct myself.
To the Xenias that various people direct at me,

I nod generously, exchange charming greetings, and—
By doing so, I position myself upwind of them.

Being courteous to those who had spoken ill of me was a virtue; those who did not crumble when faced with it were few. I took their conceived phrases and—

I received them with due ceremony, concealing a bitter smile as I donned the crown-like—

I don it with due ceremony and, right before their eyes, extol their keen insight—
I extol their keen insight indeed.
I—since infancy—throw:
Not a soul believes the father who is thrown to be weak.
Having fully grasped that no one exists—in this way—
I act.
However, because I value what is mine, I will never
accept their crude words as they are
I do not.
So they perfectly fit my stature—instead—
So they appear elegant—I must tailor them anew.

Ah!
In this way I write quiet Xenia—

I must!

Chant

This day made for azure skies
The quiet plain draws me in
The tender day
Will likely never come again
And those same skies
Will probably dawn tomorrow too.

April wind
I sit by the window
I watch the April wind blowing outside
I recall: in various regional towns

the many orphaned middle school students I knew

In truth they were not orphans, but—

"Orphans!" they deliberately convinced themselves.

Feeling utterly liberated,

They fooled around with abandon and committed vice.

Warped defamation and delight!

Then suddenly grew sad

And were enraptured by impulsive good deeds.

The April wind blew—exactly in the manner

Of those middle school students of old.

It had been a great blessing they never noticed,

Reassured in its own course,

Playing mischief on every road along its path.

It became glittering rapids about a belt's width,
back toward the winter left behind.
The portion that raced headlong—
the April wind mocked my aged self.
That which once bound me—
Where have the many family bonds gone?

Another part of it
makes me seem distrustful—
with sweet sibilant sounds
it entices so insistently.
To some things I am still too young.
Let it make me dig in my heels like this.
Even so—a single bond—
if they'll let me search it out eventually...

Improvisation

...To tell the truth, I don't need poems or such.
Nor is there anything to write.

Strangely, the sea hesitates.
The new moon is in the sky.

Days flow quietly away; they are too quiet.
Regret and longing now pay me no heed,

At the strangely bright edges of the field

I was walking alone.

The water rail came walking the entire path without flying.

On the path where the water rail went,

A fragrant morning breeze was not needed.

I didn't need lace clouds either.

Because the fog hesitated,

I knew it was as warm as a kitchen.

On nights when I lodged in the chestnut dwarf grove,

The beautiful dew collected beneath upturned leaves
The water rail became sake and I drank it all down
At a whitish lakeside with distant waves

That place's all-too-at-home wild goose,

The water rail disliked having companions on the path.

The coercively plaintive tales of yore—

Because listening with mismatched interjections was tiresome,

Soon the water rail would come to my garden.

And then, leaving this biographer behind,
it would leave as it had come.

Incantation

In autumn's dim-lit corner I did not linger

had become

Like days that were full of abundance

Within me, in my respite

had become fresh shadows

The morning glory could not bloom

had become

Memories of Ariake Sea

The carriage galloped away into the distant light.

I remain alone on the shore.

I am already too late

In the distant heavens,

The sea waves seethed, fell, and ceased to the last drop.

A silent chorus made this their gathering place.

Moonlit window's lover
The song of the dog in the thicket, the stream murmuring through valleys...
Through boundless gleaming mud sea
While stitching through
There was no means to reach my shore
Of those songs devoid of such presences
Trembling and flickering within

Near the green island

I cast my gaze far off
Dreaming and being lured,
How often those boys
Each rode their small wooden boards
Sliding toward his island.
Ah, my grandfather's tale!

The children who drowned deep in the mud sea
transparently, transparently
transformed into countless shiyappa.

Note: The boys along Ariake Bay ride small boards, kicking across August's endless tidal flats to glide far away.
Shiyappa are a transparent species of shrimp that bore holes in the mud sea's depths to dwell.

(Poem by an Anonymous Poet)

Retreated into deep mountain forests
Mingled with many bygone autumns
This year’s autumn—
Distinguishing them proved no easy task
Let me call upon that smiling one

………………………………………

………………………………………

I burned with longing in the fierce forest,

I emerged onto the bright cliff where day meets its end.

Silence longed for its auspicious hour.

Upon the ocean, the unending waves made their blossoms bloom.

Ah, there would be no song after contemplation.

I trod through goblins' white rippling grain,

Under the evening moon crossed the vast sea's surface,

Let me call upon that one of insipid smile.

Hospital Patients' Song

There lies that mountainside with a sweeping vista.

Because a friend had left the room and such,
That I attempted to cure my tuberculosis was my error.
What we call a friend—that is my living deceased father.
There had been only a plan there,
Training had been lacking.
At the town hospital where I had been admitted,
Come behold.

As if in some profound tome there,
the effort of composing the scenery oneself
was in the first place an effort I was spared.
And there were set walk times.
In the narrow courtyard, the path lay clearly visible at a glance,
having taken the shape of lightning bolts and various hiragana characters.
At the curved path that unexpectedly drew near,
exchanging smiles with other patients was a humble pleasure.
The beginning and end of those walk times

The hospital had adopted as its mechanism for notifying patients——in place of bells or similar devices——

the hospital had the dog—trained with an actor’s skill—bark

And we knew with crisp satisfaction
(We went out for walks for that dog’s sake),
So persistently had they interfered with my sleep

Are there no clocks in this hospital?

There are—they do exist—but their usage is entirely different.

I boarded a dugout canoe and shouldered a hunting rifle

To any of those twelve islands

It had been made possible to land at any time and at will.

Go—to the depths of your sorrow

The great crane soared through night's solitary sky

At times upon the dark roof of my slumbering house

The great crane thundered within the moonlight.

The one I had made depart was gone...

The April wheat, so verdant,

Could no longer be harvested as fodder for regret.

At the forest's edge where the demon king had perished,

In a garden where distant silk tree flowers bloomed,

The thronging children cheered boisterously.

They mimicked my person's mournful voice...

(Go—to the depths of your sorrow
Brightly adorn the solemn place)

Riverside Song

I lie down by the riverside
(Once more I have returned)
This pose I’ve struck countless times before
O weeds encroaching upon my shoulder—
Long-familiar and profoundly meaningful—
If they sneer:
You are most likely mistaken.

After long years of absence

I have returned once more.
I am not even slightly wounded,
nor made abundant,
Far from remorse,
With a rushing sound, the river flows.

The nature of the time remaining to me!

The Exactitude of Solitude
With its precise calculation,
In the midst of the blazing sun
Already it began to destroy itself.
A single wild morning glory

I find

When I tumbled down here like this,
how strangely the clouds came and went.
Surrounding my sky,
each bearing celestial names,
the mountains' unchanging play of features!
Like a fountain's indolence
I too abandoned the dashing wings.
But in youth's flight dreams,
in those flight dreams,
I was never abandoned.
I was never indeed abandoned.

Wandering

Deep seaweed still quivered in sunlight.

As their leaves clustered,

Spontaneously, eyes opening,

In an unknown inlet I floated, came to realize.

Ah, how many years had passed beyond the water gate?

The swelling cradle of sinking waves

Fear and arrogance indeed endure

That song lulled me to sleep.

I do not see

The birds that have endured this august sky's blue.

The mica rock's light pursuing the school of fish…

Encircling the awakened me,

The oar sound resounded without hesitation.

Ah, we are not hindered, distant ones!

A boat rowed by islanders in a throng.

――At this moment，the rocky crevices deep within the inlet
spurted pure water for the solitary one’s purifying bath――
——declared
Rather，they sing of this day of mine.

About the brief radiant days

People sing.

In people's memories
Those days were cunning.
They had chosen a good time and place.
A single swamp spread throughout the world.
All swamps that capture people's eyes
And so they remained small.

I have no songs.

About those brief radiant days.

Rather, they sing of this day of mine.

Nightingale (A Poem by an Old Man)

(My soul)—I cannot say such a thing.

As evidence, I will tell you——

In the distant past when I was young, my friend
He lived on the edge of a deep mountain.
I occasionally visited that house.
Then he turned toward the mountain's embrace
He blew a strangely piercing whistle
He surely lured a single nightingale.
And with that unforgettably beautiful song,
It was his custom to entertain me

However, soon he had to enter medical school
he went to the city
The mountain house was abandoned.
And then continuously—after half a century
We had become half-gray people,
now at his town doctor's clinic
We reunited.
I still remembered
I asked him about that nightingale.
He smiled as
He answered that he couldn’t particularly recall it.
That was probably
his childhood that had long vanished
so many turkeys and snakes and sparrows,
earthworms and various kinds of livestock and

Amidst countless plants and climates,
it was because it had passed through.
And that nightingale too,
to the same degree as all others,
was probably part of his daily life.
And yet (my soul) remembers.

And then a poem I myself don't believe in
rises to my lips
I leave this for your old age—
I wrote it down
(Poet unknown)
Eat the shadow on the water
while shifting into the scent of flowers
There's no end to concerts