Pathway to Japanese Literature

1
I have served Master Chaliapin—
a flea who has served for many years.
We were born together in Kazan’s ancient Tartar capital;
having lived together through these years, we stand now at sixty-four summers.
In summer I dwell beneath his collar’s cool shade;
in winter nest within his warming mane;
my ordinary quarters lie about his solar plexus—
keen ears and fleet legs mark my tradecraft’s edge.
Though Master remains oblivious still,

I know everything—the Soviet situation; recent news of Master Chaliapin’s old friend Mr. Gorky; through diligently running about and listening in; even how the world gradually changes—and knowing all this is my pleasure.

2

I’d had enough of Master’s songs,

the filthy applause of the bourgeoisie,

their strained efforts to scrape together admission fees,

the crowds coming to hear Master Chaliapin’s art—

deafening ovations echoing through the hall had become routine.

Yet that owner of large laboring hands

had never once heard workers’ applause,

not with tickets priced at two yen, four yen, six yen—

3

"I may not look it, but I'm a Communist among fleas!"

"That's why I can criticize Master Chaliapin,"
"Now pray don't laugh."
THE COMMUNIST FLEA

Farewell, my flea self.

To your heart’s content—
Go ahead and hurl your insults—
The flea’s invective—HA HA HA HA HA
Flea—HA HA HA HA HA

HA HA HA HA HA—the Communist Flea

“How does it feel?”

Through imitative watching and listening—Master’s
Mephisto’s Song of the Flea
had a deftness in that exact replica—wouldn’t you say?

He sang this in Japan as well.

From the box seats, someone shouted in Russian,

“Please sing *Mephisto’s Song of the Flea*.”

Then Chaliapin, from the stage—
“The concert has only just begun—
“There’s no need to rush—”
he scattered charm about and was met with applause upon applause once more.

4

Master was sorely lacking in understanding—
Even when he said, “There’s no need to rush”—
The so-called national character of the Japanese people—
They’re the most hurried race in all the world—
Master didn’t realize they were what you might call a hasty folk.

Yaponskii (Japanese) are an emotional people—
but theirs is not deep emotion,

a nation that always acted with “cornered resolve,”

And they were frighteningly simplistic—

――Soviet = Stalin

――Literature = Gorky

――Pushkin = Onegin

――Chaliapin = Song of the Flea,

When it came to snapping things off at the edges—

When it came to understanding, they were geniuses—

“the matter of ‘other conditions’—”

[they] were blessed with a talent for ignoring.

5

My master Chaliapin truly lived up to his title as the king of vocal music. First, his immense vocal volume—but they were not surprised by his vocal volume. What surprised them was “the frog in the well.” In foreign countries, that level of vocal volume wasn’t rare. Chaliapin-esque vocal volume—it was commonly found scattered all over Japan. Just go to the military review, go to the drill ground. Go to Toyama Gahara. “Attention!” “Heads to the right—” How resounding—those imperialist shouts of command!

That voice was not inside the hall—

It was high in the open air—the professionally high voice of the Old Sergeant, no doubt—

6

Poor thing, Master sang it too,

Krotkin’s poem, Dargomyzhsky’s music

Master sang the dramatic poem *The Old Sergeant* with an air of deep emotion,

Master’s usual habit—stroking the piano lid with his hand, caressing it, keeping time with his fingers—the bellows of wind within his large torso—he truly wrung out and produced a fine tone. Line up your feet—Hey, don’t lower your rifles! I have a pipe. It’s the final farewell, send me off. I’m your old man, my head’s gone white like this—this is army life. Line up your feet—One, two! Attention, dress right! *One, two, one, two...*

(From the lyrics of the dramatic poem *The Old Sergeant*)
In the rupturing applause,
*The Old Sergeant* Chaliapin

“For art’s sake”
*One, two, one, two,*

and not for worker audiences

As a so-called singer for upper-class seats,

“One, two, one, two,” he sang,

“Russia has great art”

the role of what was called a propaganda tour

Was Master fulfilling his role, I wondered? Unfortunately,

“In Russia there exists a stubborn artist.”

it was as if he went around touting such things.

7

There existed another specimen of stubbornness—

That being Professor Pavlov,

the Soviet physiologist past sixty winters.

It is Professor Pavlov.

One morning in 1915,
The assistant arrived at the laboratory about twenty minutes late.
His face was deathly pale, and his mind was unsettled,

“Why were you late?”

Then the young research assistant replied.

“Professor, the city was in the throes of revolutionary street battles—

“I barely managed to get here, dodging bullets—”

Then the professor made a displeased face.

“Revolution is revolution; research is research.

“They have nothing to do with each other. Being late is unacceptable.

“Now get to work immediately—”

8

Many scholars fled abroad with the outbreak of the revolution.

Professor Pavlov—
“Russia is my eternal homeland.”
“No matter what the political system becomes,”
“I won’t take a single step away from Russia!”
—stubbornly continued his research amid famine.
Soon, the cry “Save Pavlov!” arose.

This was a kind of admirable stubbornness.

Chaliapin, too, had once remained in the new Russia,

he had contributed to the new Republic," but
he left on a tour of Europe and America and never returned,
he simply joined the ranks of exiled artists

He absolutely refused to return home—to what category of stubbornness could this possibly belong? Professor Pavlov was transmitting the valuable fruits of his research to new Communists and scientists.

9

Chaliapin did nothing but astonish the world’s bourgeois artists and audiences
with the sheer volume of his voice—
leaving topics in bourgeois parlors
of various countries’ middle- and upper-class citizens—
wandering from place to place while singing his departures.
Chaliapin kept shouting:
“Voice is not my art itself—”

“A means to express what lies deep within the soul—”

“My art isn’t voice—no, not voice—”

Chaliapin’s voice—
Rather than a voice within a concert hall—

This is the wind-swept collective farm’s

In the granary,
were he to sing before young Russian men,
how perfectly it would suit him.

10

Stravinsky regarded the concert hall as his worst enemy. This detestable thing stifled the workings of the audience’s imagination—it was a detestable thing that restricted. The concert hall treated music as a kind of sedative, creating falsehoods among the general populace. And he fiercely rebelled against the concert hall.

In capitalist countries’ concert halls,

The freedom in program selection was restricted—those who could sing were permitted only songs loyal to their own class; rebellious ones found no tolerance. Through admission fees came restrictions on audience demographics—ah! How exorbitant those prices stood! Proletarians faced rejection at ticket gates; likely turned away without mercy.

11

actualizing human will
spurring it onward was

even though this was the very purpose of new art—

Ah, how in capitalist countries’ music concert halls—

Music must serve as opium—
Chaliapin tours from one opium den to another across nations.
The owner of human voice, having attained natural resonance—
Chaliapin had lost both place and time to sing.

A girl placed flowers on the stage and left.

Then our great artist Chaliapin—

he crawled on his belly like a dog on stage and kissed the flowers,

To speak of Gorky would
because it would force him to talk about politics—
Chaliapin does not speak of Gorky,
“For I have devoted my entire life solely to the god of the Muses—”
Chaliapin—to speak of humans is
Chaliapin knows that to speak of humans is to speak of politics—
To speak of Gorky is to speak of the Soviet.
Now, to speak of Chaliapin—what would it amount to speaking of?

Gorky was clear-cut.

What kind of political background could Chaliapin possibly have?
What might it be?

12

He—he was an exile.

A homeland lost, a voice pure “Slavic”.

This alone was the one thing he held dear,

Old age wore away the beloved voice,

Even the political protection of bourgeois countries

Could not sustain the decline of his physical body.

The dynamic effects of the voice—

He was a genius at capturing them,

Ah, but the body of him who sang—

Its physiological organization had indeed entered its period of decadence,

This alone—this singer’s body’s—

It was a matter pertaining to individual cells—
in his body now,
living cells and
dying cells were intensifying their fierce conflict.

13

Chaliapin—reducing his own perishing cells to pure will—

had no recipient to convey them to.

Gorky’s perishing cells,

Pavlov’s perishing cells—

they were transmitted to the Soviet’s new generation,

to its young people.

There, they were transformed into immortal cells.

14

Kastalsky

dedicated his entire life to the creation of new music for peasants

At the advanced age of seventy, among a group of young Komsomol members,

surrounded by a group of young Komsomol members, he died.

Shostakovich (b. 1906) was

At fifteen, he published a composition and startled critics.
At eighteen, he wrote a symphony.
By age twenty-five, he had admirably composed works embodying the ideology of the new homeland.
The arranger of *Quiet Don*—
I wonder how Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov is doing now—
Kovry, Lobachev, Kuraasev—
The composers of chorus pieces and marches for soldiers—
For urban workers and peasants—

What were these composers up to now—
composers and singers—in Russia there were
as numerous as clouds—
these people were practical patriots—
but Chaliapin, having lost his homeland,

He was a nostalgic patriot.

15

The purity of art—

To protect this purity,

Chaliapin—who abandoned the Soviet—revealed human frailty.

Which is to say: his art had been fragile.

What is called the purity of art and its strength—

That which can endure new trials—

O great solitude!

The moment he left his homeland, Chaliapin—
had lost his collective political collaborators,
In bourgeois countries,
solely through individualistic force
he was forced into a position where he had to steadfastly defend his own art,

O profound solitude,

16
At Tokyo Station’s entrance, he was greeted by cries of “Ura!”
holding the Imperial-era tricolor flags
amid a crowd of White Russian émigrés,
These tricolor flags now belonged to the realm of playthings,
In reality, the country of such flags
even though the country of such flags had perished long ago,
Even here, they clung to these foolishly stubborn dreams—
The people clinging to them kept waving them incessantly.

17

The superficial yellowness of Japanese complexions and
the clattering sound of geta and
the uniform applause within the hall and
Amidst these phenomenal Japanese applauses,
My Chaliapin sang splendidly,

Japanese music theorists noted—
Chaliapin adhered rigidly to textbook principles of vocal production—
they claimed he sang through diaphragmatic-lateral breathing—

“Maintenance of the Phonatory Zero Point”

That is, even across different vocal registers—high and low—

they say he does not move his larynx position up or down.

they say he demonstrates an ideal form,

they were bustling with various critiques,

“It’s not technique. It’s not vocal pitch.”

My heart, my heart—

Meanwhile, Chaliapin cried out.

18
Like the superficial smoothness of Mount Fuji’s form—

Japan’s music scene too appeared harmonious on the surface,

But even in this genre—

Just like the genres of poetry， drama， and novels，

In those depths—at earth’s axis， beneath ocean floor—

they were fiercely contending and roaring,

In Japan’s music scene too, factions attacking Shostakovich’s music theory and those supporting it quarreled. The supporters withdrew from the group and formed new factions.

Progressive conflicts were unfolding.

Backstage, Minister Matsuda, who had shaken hands with Chaliapin,

And then, within less than a week of that, Minister Matsuda had abruptly died.

Japan’s reality too was quite hurried,

Japan viewed from above the concert hall,

the Japan passed by in a car—

[Chaliapin] did not know there existed another, more intense Japan,

Chaliapin over-sang onward amidst the applause.

19

I may have been somewhat

Master Chaliapin’s

I may have overdone the insults.
I’ve forgotten my position as a flea and grown too human.

I seemed to have grown too human-like—but then, my refusal to cower when speaking truths proved no different from my shameless bloodsucking. What else could one expect?

It’s the same thing, so there’s no helping it.

Before long, my master Chaliapin’s body will,

My master Chaliapin’s body would gradually cool.
On that day，I would transfer to the proprietor of a new body．
But I’ve had enough of keeping company with exiles．