Pathway to Japanese Literature

At that time I was sitting in prison.

The iron bars

were separating me from the guard's holstered pistol.

The guard

would bend low to peer through the deliberately sunken window

and every morning bow ceremoniously to me.

As proof I hadn't yet escaped,

from between an unkempt beard resembling that midget Bukharin's

each morning I glared fixedly at the guard.

This was our greeting.

When morning came, shadows fell from the right window.

When night came, shadows fell from the left window.

Each time, the asphalt-black shadow circled around the iron bars.

The shadow spread two worlds vividly before me.
I felt this.

Between the iron bars lay ×× and servility and—
a clown-show zoo—

Who would dare call that freedom! There, even fragments of air and sun were forced into prostitution's marketplace—purchased like harlots! Dogs wearing cat-masks, aping monkeys, bungling oafs—what a cramped and wretched cosmos! And with what arrogance—who would dare name us the caged ones!

Of this outside world’s ×× and servility, of the clown-show zoo—

Are we not the intrepid zoo directors—and what's more, we hold within us the key to life and death!

Oh, what a free place this is!
And what a charming world this must be!

And then one day,

I lay sprawled on the plank floor like a carefree armadillo,

I was devouring book pages at random.

Ironically, it was precisely this stubbornness that had stunted them—

By becoming stubborn, they had become stunted.

Poets of the small island nation

They methodically unfolded classical museum exhibits.

They belonged to poetry and discourse on poetry.

I picked out two names from among them.

—Byron!

Once there was an Englishman who doled out pleasantries to the masses to protect such scowling faces……

—Heine!

Once there was a German who loved the people precisely because he was so self-serving……

And

A man of a certain Japan who had worn down his poetic talent on imperialism's sharp tip—who just the other day aged and dropped dead into the grave—
once grew pale amidst stars and violets
while watching the march of an even more tenacious band of robbers, and declared:
"—Byron and Heine may lack passion..."
"—Yosano Tekkan stands here..."
In present-day Japan, they have speciously reburied these two in the graveyard of a Pantheon of cure-alls.
There exists a contingent of the lumpen proletariat.

Marxism—Romanticism—Classicism—moderate Ero-Grotesque-ism
The life manifesto of sword-brandishing self-styled heroes in their studies

They were twisting old phrases and criticizing the world and its decadence

And

Byron, as applauded as the Ethiopian War of Resistance,

Heine, as cherished as a pedigreed Persian cat in a shop window,

And so they sang while frowning at the policemen’s tramping footsteps.

"—Byron and Heine may lack passion..."

"—Here lie the pen and sake jug..."

Fearless comrade worker Lin

young and brave comrade worker Ishida,

And then of many comrades’

of these nostalgic smuggled fruits’

the taste reminiscent of the pleasant glissando from district factories that pulsed daily in sync with my heart,

To digest my sickly shriveled indigestible stomach,

while I drank them down drop by drop, gulp after gulp,

And these delivered books,

(Unauthorized borrowings from the National Library, customary circulated volumes from comrades to political prisoners!)

While I digested this noble matter through crude cerebral fluid yet more thoroughly,

I was entranced in reverie.

Outside, so that this fluid might become cerebral fluid,

how many stomachs and lungs were tormented,

how many hands trembled, eyes grew dizzy.

Are the trumpets heralding the march to eradicate hunger being blown from every corner of the factories?

The gastric realm of freedom that digests all things

together with the freedom of all people's gastric realms,

in such a double prison of two worlds

it will likely come before long—it will be compelled to come and compelled to come again, I thought—

And I nonchalantly began whistling and singing out loud.

—Whether night or day— — —
—The prison is bright— — —
—Sometimes the damn dog— — —

—Wagging its tail from the window— — —

Then someone knocked rhythmically on the window.

I called back "Hey" without rising from my supine position.

A metallic clang more ceremonious than any dress sword answered me.

“Is that the guard?”

Then the thick woven shadow at the window impatiently blocked me.
"—A monk?"

This time, a long-haired shadow with a theatrical topknot stood blocking me diagonally from the iron bars.

“Not a comrade!”

I half-rose and said, “Enter!”

“Of course, the key to the torture chamber’s entrance lies in the guard’s

“the apostasy chamber’s exit key resides in the monk’s

“pocket, you see.”

Then the shadow entered restlessly all the way in.

As Kaiser questioned Lupin,

As The Three Musketeers questioned the Iron Mask,

Then, a magnificent man stood before me—crimson mantle draped over curling locks, lips twisted in a sneer, limping yet imposing—

Unmistakable English breed, King Charles' pureblood scion, libertine poet…

This was my first meeting with Lord Byron.

As soon as he entered, swinging his plumed hat triumphantly from left to right like a child while erecting his bull neck straight toward his heels, he began speaking haughtily like Tomoda Kyosuke on stage: “The romantic spirit we have forged—with the righteous indignation and exaltation necessary for that purpose, and just a touch of passion—”
(He deliberately sneezed with eye-defying abruptness)
I respectfully offered greetings to the Captive Lord:
“I am the sherry and the friend of the people as commanded by the woman of the Stamboul breed—though this one—”

(Lord Byron abruptly stifled a belch.) “By command of that which straddles from our gastric realm—my name is the Exalter of Passion to its Loneliest Heights, the Caresser of Occluded Passions. And if you so desire—under conditions where such exaltation would isolate you from the people—I could press you into the catalog of magnificent emancipation proposals, though—” At this moment, behind the imposing shadow of Lord Byron’s mantle, I noticed an even more compact

a hunchbacked little man—eyes darting like a squirrel’s, resembling a replicated statue—

leaning on crutches

I discovered him nervously posturing to draw attention to himself. Like a parched puppy, he swiftly intercepted my gaze. Tripping over one crutch while raising his German-made counterpart as if brandishing a weapon, his mouth twitching restlessly, he impatiently called out to me.

“The neurosis of freedom creates neurotic freedom—let us revel in this ×× beauty, my friend!”

“Heinrich Heine, as for me—”

“Welcome,” I said while re-crossing my legs in a cross-legged position.

This scene I had half-anticipated—

In order to expedite the proceedings—

Such things were common in 1935 prisons.
In the hearts of a considerable number of people who believed they had settled their accounts—how many fragments of Lord Byron of John Bull strain resided,
how many seemingly easygoing Mr. Heines
must have been dancing romantic ballads in some corner of their hearts.
If the proletariat,
alongside the many silhouettes of lives passing before the retina,
were to face Byron and Heine straight on—he would be right.

But if carelessly this silhouette—with a goose’s appetite—once burrowed into his innards, two distinct breeds of bourgeois would exert an unhealthy influence on him like malaria. In our bodies there naturally existed the dregs of Byron and Heine. With avoidance, contempt, hostility, and a modicum of friendship, I pushed back against them while

We succinctly declared our stance.

“Welcome, Lord Byron!
“Welcome, Mr. Heine!

Though my tongue remains unaccustomed to the language of your homelands—

the descendants of Albion’s pirates and

the son of a Rhineland wool merchant—

with what tongue they spoke, with what diaphragm they uttered—”

In this petty yellow bourgeois nation of the East,
since boyhood we had agonized alongside dictionary fragments,
been forcibly compelled to hurriedly absorb ourselves into them.
A twist of fate—
now here it made me confront your poems, ghosts, and diagonal successors.
This filthy solitary cell lay buried in sweat, shit,
and the body odor of forced labor products—
but while you can endure that leisure of making each other into merry epigones,
we probably still share that luxury between us."

“You’ve likely kept each other company as such—”

The work was sweltering，and I had finished reading the books.

To prevent me from speaking with neighboring cells, they’d emptied out the area around me as thoroughly as a watermelon rind, and—
There was still time before the government-issued six-sen set meal,
“And the prison newspaper’s publication is taking a little break right now, you see.”

Lord Byron answered while waving his hand.

"I, you see, have always been a defender of riots."

"When that mob of machine-breakers banded together to confront the Capital Punishment Act like sewer rats, was I not the sole one who cast a red vote for them in parliament?"

"When workers—"

"When hunger—being struck across the cheek with a club and ××—is placed under ××,"

"They do have a way of appearing and vanishing like phantoms, don't they? Absolutely! Ned Ludd, their leader—that man kept rising up even when they killed him again and again. Tens of millions had become Ned Ludd. I came to feel deeply—that it was not leaders who created ×× but rather ×× which forged its own leaders—I came to feel it as profoundly as the existence of my beloved female duck."

“It’s not that Byron creates splendid passion; rather, passion creates Byron.”

Uttering such an epigrammatic line through his tattered soft palate while
on his loincloth—the sole unwashed item among his garments—
he wrinkled his noble nose slightly.

Mr. Heine, leaning on his crutch,
stepped forward while trying to hug his chest as much as possible with his awkward hands, trampling the hem of Lord Byron’s cloak.
“Your passion, Lord Byron—
wanders upon your ancestral seas.
After passing those monstrous restraint bills for capitalist dictatorship,
you take lifelong pride in casting scattered votes against a single suppression act.
You poured into ×× the same passion you had for your beloved duck—”

“By the time those who fancy themselves stirred up by your rhetoric ascend the guillotine,
didn’t you swiftly abandon ship?
Your interests—
those red ballots of yours fundamentally align
with the white-voting philistines.
But Lord Byron—
while you were panting through your diaphragm
with Alpine gusts and Indian monsoons,
I waged revolution from below along both Rhine banks.
Though in revolution—as an agitator’s role—”

“Guidance isn’t an organizer’s duty at all, you know. Let’s at least settle the ledger of responsibility for now. Who’d go through such tedious rigmarole anyway?”

Mr. Heine sputtered with an embarrassed look, slightly bowing his head.

Lord Byron declared, while concerned about his hair pomade becoming sticky from the cell’s heat,

“I’ve liked drinking from skull cups since childhood.”

As he gazed at the crimson wine unearthed from the mansion’s cellar,
within it,
he saw a scarlet pirate flag undulating atop the wine dregs.
The boys of Harrow sang songs of free pirates.

They danced.

Men and women alike embraced each other indiscriminately and collapsed drunk.

His stunted yet bombastic rants!

By the time he had dyed his more classical, untrimmed beard in Wellington’s style to rival Napoleon,

They leapt aboard merchant ships and broke through the blockaded continent,
to Malacca with slaves and spices
ventured as far as Syria to purchase women.

When I was twenty-four, my homeland was in extraordinary turmoil.

Workers staged ×× in the cities, and soldiers were weary of battle.

I went by the name of young Harold.
Together with lira, pen, and John Bull’s common usurer’s purse,
I bid farewell to the homeland of disrupted industry and carnal desires and set out on my journey.
In revolutionary Spain, I debated Wellington’s tactics,
examined how much goods could be exported in exchange for Rome and Hellas’s scrap tools,
and studied strategies to strike straight from the Dardanelles to create Ukraine’s granary.
To those who know not freedom, force freedom upon them!

Plunder freedom from those who possess it!

During such a busy journey, I would occasionally think - what they called 'slave freedom' must have held such wretched allure since Harrow days. And even if my travels became the imperialists' vanguard, still I would take pride in forging a particular mold of liberals within full-blown imperialism.

Mr. Heine withdrew with a slight stammer.

“Among my uncles dwells a magnificent thief.

As a child, I worshipped this uncle with the same fervor as Napoleon clasped in cuffs.

This uncle
in America, as carefree as a pistol bullet's tip,
mercilessly ransacked banks and farms.
I embedded Uncle's portrait
between Shilda's shadow and a somewhat Catholic-tinged copy of nocturnal light,
carrying it glued to my backside for life.

In my sacred shrine,

In the space between Frankfurt and Paris, bundles of hair from women I once loved along with Marx’s letters and the tapestry of Schlesien’s defeat, together with the sword scabbard I flung about when attending university—the uncle from that fairy-tale-free America was reverently enshrined there. If one were to go to the continent, there’s a splendid inheritance that this Uncle amassed through thievery—but alas!

—And after that, even in literary cafés,

Even in the seats of capricious exile trains,

Even in the midst of carnal desires and ×× fantasies,

“Uncle was always my × flag!”

Lord Byron, as moved as an M-button coming undone, struck his chest and responded:

“My flag is the crimson banner of pirate ships that crossed the Atlantic!

Though it’s somewhat Nazi-like in its blackish tinge,

While dedicating this banner to Utopian Lord Moore—who danced through the finale of his merry sheep-seeking quadrille at the Tower of London—

My Conrad charged into the Orient.

When he became imprisoned,

He stained his moderately gentle hands with blood and even assisted with ××.

And at dawn, when the islands entangled with kudzu vines became safe havens,
with a single kiss as the signal,
like the sea monk monsters that a Goryeo harem merchant pulled out one after another from his luggage,
the woman who vanished promptly—simultaneous with our return from adventure—

Without even the mundane burdens that tormented Ulysses to his death,

a wife who dutifully maintained her chastity only to expire for me

"How we must have caressed such women in the name of ××!"

This flag—

"My Manfred hung upon Jungfrau's window of contemplation. The conspiratorial existence in buffer zones severed from the homeland"

Just like the seventh heaven,
the seventh witch—
With hyperbolic fervor enough to deplete Carnival
and romantic garments of bachelor-like intensity—
I passionately loved while bearing down!

“This flag—my Don Juan made it the banner to hallow the world as my domain! I disguised myself as a hag withered by rouge and powder and a beautiful boy worn down by a Sultan, leisurely traversed the old continent—the dandy’s sword at my hip, received from Scott in exchange for an Athenian ash urn—he attempted a historic flight even to the present site of the Savet Union!”

Mr. Heine rustled the pension demand letter from another banker uncle entangled with a gold chain in his hip pocket. While surveying the cell devoid of alcohol or clocks, he let out a breath. "This place reeks of absurd ××." "This one needs a spine and riding instructor more than Ludwig ever did." "This one, more than Ludwig ever was, fervently swears by ancestral shrines and loves parched poems, women suited to his corrupt health, crown princes, and fascist-marked bombs to haphazardly settle matters."

"This one—more than Ludwig ever was—wrings the people dry to their marrowbones, and loves nothing better than driving them out with × and hoes to the very ××× ends."

"This one—more than Ludwig ever was—wields capital stretching from banks to prisons, battering ×× warriors one after another into Chiron-cell hovels through his guards."

"But what times these are now."

I, who am eternally a warrior of the Romantic Revolution,

"If Hitler’s persecution of Jews made an uncle’s pension unreliable,
I supposed I’d have to take handouts from the glorious French government then.
‘Since this one’s signed a humiliating pact with the Savet Union and lurks ready to hatch its next fresh cowardly scheme—wouldn’t capital’s outlets be mostly clogged solid by now?’"

Utterly unfazed, I watched as the two finally began their attacks on the Savet Union from east and west.

“Well then,” I asked.

“To put it in a word – what would you have me call this advice of yours?”

With a sudden motion, Lord Byron flung his signature greatcoat back behind him—

Lord Byron declared: “× Prison!
To fantasy and Fascism!”

Hesitantly, while crouching on that familiar crutch,

Heine said—“Apostasy!
To the study and café!”

After a brief pantomime,

As if in silent agreement, they cast their eyes upon the Tosa paper-textured desk, dining table, and seven waist-and-leg utility tools.

Dust!

A yellowed sheet—Mother's letter—unemployment,

wandering,

illness,

the complaints of aged infirmity,

and trust in her twenty-three-year-old self who loved with childlike purity—

—I blocked the two’s gazes with displeasure.

“Mother!” declared Lord Byron—“That woman crushed my leg at birth! I’ve swallowed poison like prison slop a thousand times over!”

“Mother!” Heine said—“The mother through whom I begged crusts and survival money—what a piece of work she was!”

The mother who planted syphilis in British Empire’s pirate capitalists.

The mother who implanted spinal caries in German Empire’s petty pirates—those inheriting poetry and commodities from them.

These two bloods pulsed through the apostates’ entire bodies.

Heredity influences children with precision beyond expectation!

I stared intently at their faces that eluded my gaze.
The instant our eyes met,
Lord Byron sheepishly clashed his sword and shouted.

“Let’s go, Mr. Heine!
“Ethiopia seems to be booming, doesn’t it?”

"We once rushed to Hellas for freedom, wine, and plunder.

We shouted—freedom!

Then the sailors shouted, 'Wages!'

I scrawled infrastructure banknotes with my pen.

The sailors started a riot.

I landed at Missolonghi"

I declared myself emperor of freedom.

At times cholera would break out and

our gold rush was crushed alongside the rioters’ freedom.

Caught in a crossfire of miasma rising from the ruins of the Parthenon,

I lay on a bed as twisted as Chi'an.

Those meddlesome biographers of mine

misrepresented my final words like this:

"Advance!
Advance toward freedom!"
So they claim.

But what I actually said was this:

—Press on!
“Comrades, continue!”

"My harem and commodities!" I said—
I placed at the head of my harem my sister Augustus—who had shared my bed since infancy—
I placed at the head of my harem
And I buried Allegra—the illegitimate child who collapsed covered in pustules—in my Harley avenue of trees,
I placed at the end of my harem
In my solemn harem, there was no mother in place of a boy.

(But that was a deathbed fantasy on a Mediterranean sickbed near Easter!)

Everything was over!

The Mishico-maru of those days was

being ridden about by those phantom ships that carved open Suez—

"Let's give that old vessel a proper overhaul!

Rather than repairing Trafalgar's flagship that led the admiral to an end more starved of freedom's poetry than mine—

Wouldn't that carry more meaning?"

“And let’s steer for Ethiopia! Mr. Heine, through your uncle’s bequest, you shall take up the presidency of the Ethiopian National Bank! I’ll seize Addis Ababa and proclaim Emperor Byron I of Ethiopia!”

But the gloomy Heine remained silent. The reckoning of ’48 and ’05 lay upon his calendar of ’35. He stood with crossed arms, gradually retreating backward as if fearing a friend’s tap on the shoulder—

Crossing his arms and gradually stepping back, he muttered just a single word: "Was there no mother in your harem?!"

At these words,

Lord Byron desolately rubbed his forehead.

What Mr. Heine had feared had finally come to pass.
The northern pirate tapped the southern gravekeeper’s shoulder.

And at that moment,
as if signaled by a Christmas carol,
the two vanished in an instant.
I stood up

Against such specters of Lessing I declared:

"You two spirits of defeat and humiliation—

soaring high to immolate yourselves upon heroes' pyres,

sinking low to grovel before your own egos—you who have fallen!

You sing your songs of freedom with lust's substitute verses,

attempting to accomplish with the sword that ×××s the ××× organization.

However harsh the tide of time may be upon us,

you cannot make your songs of ultimate victory resound—so make those deafened ear shells open wide,

let each fragment of death and imprisonment—"

Strongly—to azure iron skies—

“Pierce through with our spirit’s steel bars and invigorating pride!”

Tonight’s meal—how many times—no, how many dozens of times—has poison been laced into this bowl!—
While listening to the sounds of trolleys hauling in and hauling away,
I lined up alongside my mother’s letter with my comrades
With a scratchy pen

I wrote, "Bu jiang shen, bu ru zhi (Note)."

This was after the two shadows had vanished,
This was the record I had etched until the deathly prison brought us life.

(1936.1, Poet January Issue)

(Editor’s Note) The Master said: Do not debase yourself; do not disgrace your aspirations.
Bo Yi and Shu Qi yu.
Analects, Weizi Chapter

Regarding this poem, all elements have been preserved as originally published, with censored text represented by ×× retained in their original form.