Pathway to Japanese Literature

From the Abyss of Death

Ⅰ

It had already been eight months since the esophageal cancer surgery on October 9th of last year.
All I had been able to write during those eight months lay contained here.
I still couldn't write novels.
Because sustaining mental energy proved impossible.
Poetry I could write—though saying this made poetry seem easy, in truth poetry demanded greater mental energy.
Yet I remained grateful it required only brief periods of sustained effort.
I would write two or three lines, or set down some sketch-like fragments, then leave them for two or three days—sometimes two or three weeks, even two or three months—before taking them up again and continuing in this manner.

I was discharged from Chiba University’s Nakayama Surgery Department at the end of November.
I gathered in this Part I the poems ostensibly written in the post-surgery hospital room.
This "ostensible" designation existed because they were not poems actually written in the hospital room.
Immediately after surgery, I could not possibly have written anything.
In a state of labored breathing, that had been impossible.
However, I took notes in pencil in the notebook by my pillow.
These poems were what I wrote after being discharged, using those as my foundation.
Therefore, I still decided to designate them as poems from the hospital room.

Perhaps due to pleural adhesions, the surgery proved particularly intensive, lasting nearly three hours.
A deep notch remained etched in my nails, requiring nearly six months to disappear as they grew out.
The time when I began writing poetry—though I had previously stated it was after discharge—was in fact slightly before those six months had elapsed.

I had thought to write a poem titled "From the Abyss of Death," but could not complete it.
If I could have completed it, I had intended to make that the title for the entire collection of poems.
Though I failed to achieve this, I resolved to retain it as the collection's title.

(June 17, 1964, the day before rehospitalization)

Dead Man’s Nails

On cold bricks

Ivy grows.

In the depths of night
Time piles up heavily
The dead man's nails grow

Third-floor window

On the branch of the large tree near the window

A great number of crows had gathered.

They were cawing and screeching in unison.

I waved my hands, shouting "Shoo! Get out of here!" to chase them away,

but the jet-black birds did not budge.

The ominous birds kept multiplying.

My room was on the second floor.
The crows were all peering into the third-floor window in unison.
Something was about to begin.
The crows were directing their sharp beaks toward the third-floor room.
That was the war photographer's room.

Exhausted, he had returned from the front that morning,
He should have been sound asleep.
This was during the war in Rangoon.
Had something happened?

I went up to the third floor to check.

The war photographer had died in bed.

What had gathered at the moment of death were

not merely crows clustered on the branches.

Ants too had formed an endless procession,

climbing up the wall from the ground and slipping through the third-floor window into the room

crawling up from the floor to the bed,
Aiming at the dead war photographer's eyes,
A massive swarm of ants was swarming.
I let out a scream and fled.

I now face a death from which I cannot flee like that.
Fortunately here, even if I die,
my eyeballs will not be attacked by ants.
Those bothersome crows won't come gathering either.

However, even in this case, death is not the end but the beginning.

It is not the end but the beginning.

Something is beginning.

My Flute

In the gale
The esophagus was torn asunder by the wind
Bronchi became a flute
Whistling shrilly

It comforted me.
It gradually grew more skilled,
Whistling with playful trills,
It only ends up making me feel lonelier.

Journey Home

Because I can return.

A journey is enjoyable—

That I can find solace in the journey's solitude—

Because I will someday return to my home.

So the briny ramen at the station tasted delicious, or

peek into the ever-present kokeshi doll shops

or search for souvenirs

This journey—

It is a journey back to nature.

Because this is a journey with somewhere to return to

It must be joyful.

I will soon return to the soil.

Do I need to buy souvenirs?

Burial goods like haniwa clay figures and mingqi vessels

One must not mourn a death that returns to the earth.

Along with the body, the spirit too

could return home.

The spirit that had been prone to sorrow

could sleep calmly underground.

Even when cicada larvae sometimes disturbed its slumber,

it became forgivable upon considering that ephemeral life above ground.

The ancients said life was like a bubble.

There were poets of old who saw life

in the ripples left by boats passing down rivers.

While grieving transience,

they must have simultaneously found enjoyment in giving voice to it.

I too write such poems
I want to savor this ephemeral journey.

The train will never come again.

A scant few resolutely silent passengers.
As if wiping them away—loaded them all—
The dark train departed.
The kiosk had already been cleared,
Even swallow nests stood hollow,
The desolate night platform.

The lights went out.

The station staff had all vanished without a trace.

For some reason, I alone remained there.

A dry wind blew in.

The pitch-dark platform's dust swirled up.

The train will never come again.

No matter how long I wait, it’s futile.

It will never come—not ever.

I know that.

Knowing this, I cannot leave.

I must know death.

I stand in a void more loathsome than death.

The rails glint like blades.

However, since the train will no longer come

I cannot throw myself onto the rails to die.

Death's Door

The lattice door that had always been shut whenever I looked stood open in the overgrown grass. A stench of death hung in the air.

Wail.

Cry. Howl.

Bellow at the top of your lungs.

Don't just crouch down small and weep.

O blood-caked gauze in the pus basin

And O my heart

Red fruit
Sleepless
Congestion of trees
The patient’s suffering
The dawn begins
A red pomegranate fruit bursts open.

("Red Landscape Paintings"
1)

Hemorrhage of the Jetty

The jetty's

At the tip where white spray rose

Clung to gray concrete

amoeba-like blood

Even the waves that crashed and receded

No matter how they strove

They could not wash it away.

The blood that was shed there

There, it was foully dried.

Surrounded by waves,

it had to dry slowly.

("Red Landscape Paintings"
2)

Dry Season

Let me descend into the waterless riverbed.

Even washed with water, the stain wouldn't come out.

Let me go cast away this sorrow

Between stones where water had dried to parched nothingness,

I saw something red

Not a flower—something more violent—

An intensely clear, pure color.

sorrow stained with hand grime

let me go leave it there

("Red Landscape Paintings"
3)

A Mysterious Circus

Visitors who came to the hospital room

Everyone has a mouth where a mouth should be,
has a nose where a nose should be,
has two eyes where eyes should be.
Though it's perfectly ordinary, it feels uncanny.

I grew weary of keeping company with sorrow.
I grew sick of this all-too-ordinary companionship.
Is that why I think of such unordinary things?

Why must all human faces be so utterly ordinary?
Are there no humans with one eye and two mouths?
A death that isn't ordinary—or murder
Unremarkable murder—or death

I think about what is happening somewhere right now.
Which of these does my cancer belong to?
There’s nothing strange about me dying as a human being, but
my cancer can also be considered an extraordinary murder.
I’ve done all sorts of things, but murder—
those unremarkable things and those extraordinary things—I have done neither.
Because I am someone who couldn’t kill people,
does this mean I must rather be unjustly killed?
I cannot commit murder.
But killing myself seems possible.

Even I, who have done nearly everything,
I have yet to commit suicide.
The pleasure of suicide still remains.
What would be the best way to commit suicide?

The pleasure of pondering various things

In this strange pleasure, I am now engrossed.

Though it's no ordinary pleasure,

For me, it's no strange pleasure.

On the rope stretched across the hospital room window
Sorrow—
hung by laundry clips
Sorrow washed countless times and faded from washing
Swaying together with gauze
Sorrow that had sucked more of my blood than gauze
I now held this pleasure I'd only just obtained
To let go of it like that sorrow
I would absolutely not do so for some time
That too because it was a pleasure I couldn't easily relinquish
I who had done all manner of things
Had memories of various pleasures

How old was I when I was infatuated with the women of Tamanoi and diligently visited them—twenty-something?

Looking back now, it was as if I went there to purchase sorrow.

Everything I had considered pleasures

In fact, it could also be considered that they were sorrows.

This time must be real pleasure.

Thinking about suicide

To make this true pleasure rather than sorrow—

Let me consider various strange suicide methods.

Some of my friends had already committed suicide.
My friend Ozawa - who became disillusioned with ideology and hanged himself -
It was a tragic suicide that cast shadows over our hearts.

He was a man with an oddly large head, like some malformed figure. To flaunt his own uniqueness and exceptional nature, my friend Kukimura carried out a suicide no one else could replicate. He was the son of a military man and walked with a limp. Even if this wasn't a pitiful suicide, the method itself held no uniqueness. Even without uniqueness—couldn't there at least be some strange method?

Smash the window glass
Shall I invite a flock of black crows?
Crack a whip and unleash the experimental dogs—
Like the white horses of a circus

Shall I make them slip through the window and invade this room?
I must no longer allow the whip to be used to lash myself.
I'll have rabid dogs come charging in a frenzy
Together with crows pecking at carrion.

That seems at first glance unrelated to my suicide

It would be interesting to stage a mysterious circus,

Life is already a strange circus.

In everyone's case, life's circus—all of it—

Whether a life is strange or ordinary, is sealed by death.

There exists no circus-like applause there.

Am I trying to seek applause through a strange suicide?

Am I trying to console myself with a death that isn't ordinary by doing so?

Just as having two ears—one on each side—makes them human ears,

Even murder—all such deaths are but ordinary deaths.

Before my death becomes ordinary,

I must at least relish the enjoyment of suicide alone.

Oh Soul

Oh Soul—

Since it’s come to this, I’ll tell you the truth—

More than you—my esophagus

To me had been precious all along.

Now that my esophagus was lost, that became clear.

If I were told now to choose one of them—

You—would have sold off Soul.

First of all—Soul commands a higher price in this world.

The esophagus—I paid out money from my side and handed it over to others.

Oh Soul

Life must be like erupting volcanic lava.

You had been telling me that all along.

Moved, I followed those words of yours.

I still do not think your words were wrong,

but when I encountered real flowing lava,

you were already within cold solidified lava,

hiding your body in a safe crevice.

No matter how much I called, you never came out.

I suffered severe burns.

You did not come to help me.

Many times I encountered such eyes.

Oh Soul

My esophagus did not torment me like you.

It silently complied with my words.

It did not deceive me in the way you did.

It wasn't exactly cowardice, but you said one thing and did another.

When I pointed this out, you claimed that unlike the body, for the soul—

speaking itself constitutes action,

and there was never any contradiction to begin with—what a smooth-tongued argument.

You who make such claims—even if your esophagus became cancerous,

you were inherently exempt from cancer too.

What a truly privileged position Soul occupies.

Though my esophagus faithfully nourished me,

you did nothing but pontificate about life.

Oh Soul

Your words—more than them, the esophagus's actions were precious to me.

Seizing a soul that's all talk—

I want to drag you into a world of pure action.
And I want to turn you into cancer and make you suffer.
What would that silver-tongued Soul say then, I wonder?

II

These poems belong to the period immediately before hospitalization and surgery, and should have been placed before Part I.
The order is reversed, but I myself didn’t really understand why I had placed it after Part I.
It was because I wanted to do so according to my own feelings, but it might have been out of vanity—thinking that the poems in Part I had turned out better, I might have wanted others to see those first.

“Gaze,” “Blackboard,” “Pebble,” “Foolish Tears”
“Unwanted” and others were poems I wrote almost improvisationally at the time, and since no later polishing had been applied, I may personally sense a crudeness that makes me hesitate to publish them.

Poems such as "The Persistence of Youth" and "Outside the Train Window" were composed later based on notes I took while riding the train.
This was my unvarnished feeling at the time; the terror of death closing in on my heart would come later.

The Persistence of Youth

The train stopped at Kawasaki Station.
On the platform where refreshing morning light poured down,
Passengers flooded out from the train.

October’s

Morning Rush Hour

Other platforms too

Middle school students getting off there to go to school,
It was packed with people heading to their workplaces.
The platforms were thrumming with vitality.
I would ride on like this and enter the hospital.

The middle school students hurrying on the platform, like my former self,
[They] were carrying old-fashioned bags over their shoulders.
It brought back memories of my middle school days.
I was here at this Columbia factory in Kawasaki,
I had once worked temporarily right after finishing school.
The image of my youthful self came flooding back with nostalgia.
Oh sleepy-eyed young men walking the platform,
You were all my former selves.
Oh youths who were embodiments of my youth,
My youth was now overflowing on the platform.
I wanted to reach out my hand and shake yours.

But it wasn’t only nostalgia.

They ran up the bridge, trying not to be late.

Oh young workers,

Farewell.
I probably won't ever meet you all again.
I am going to the hospital to undergo cancer surgery.
On such a morning，I'm glad I could meet you all.
Strangers though you are，
I'm so glad you're all full of life.

Youth remains ever vigorous.
Farewell.
The train departs—already setting off toward death.

Farewell.

Oh Youth

Youth is always thriving.

Farewell.

Oh my youth

Outside the train window,

Outside the train window,
It was filled with light.

Filled with joy,
Throbbing with vitality,
The thought that I might already be parting with this world—
The familiar scenery

It suddenly appeared vividly new

this world

both humanity and nature

[They] were filled with happiness.

And yet I must die.

And yet this world seemed truly happy.

Without making my heart sorrowful,

instead, it soothed my sorrow.

Emotion overflowed in my chest,

my chest tightened, and tears threatened to spill.

In each window of the apartment complex

warm sunlight poured down,

chirping happily while—

a flock of sparrows flitted about,

glittering wind,

a rejoicing river surface,

those ripples like a smile,

the distant Keihin factory district’s

Smoke rising vigorously from tall smokestacks

All these things visible from the train window

As if they were living beings—
They were alive.
Brimming with power,
They appeared to shine with life.
Along the path beside the railway tracks,
People hurried to work.

Good morning, everyone.
Everyone works with vigor.
I feel at ease. With you here, all will be well.
Farewell.
I entrust what follows to you all.

Well, stay healthy—

At the boundary between life and death,

At the boundary between life and death,
What lies there, I wonder?
For example, the border between countries—
During the war at the Thailand-Burma border’s
Though I saw it when crossing the jungle,
There was nothing particularly there.
There was no border line drawn.

Even when I passed through the sea directly beneath the equator,
I saw nothing particularly special there that could serve as a marker.

No—there was a beautiful deep blue sea there.

At the Thailand-Burma border, there had been a beautiful sky.

After the squall, a beautiful rainbow had spanned that sky.

Might there not be something like a beautiful rainbow spanning the boundary between life and death?

Even if my surroundings
and I myself
were a desolate jungle,
I would gaze.

A dog gazes at its owner.
I picture earnest eyes.
Just by thinking,

Tears well up in my eyes.

In the late-night hospital room

I too fix my gaze,

I gaze at something.

Pebble

Don't kick.

Let me sleep.

Enough here already.

Just single-mindedly

Let me sleep

Foolish tears

To the ear.

Oh foolish tears,

Don't intrude.

Or are they trying to reach my heart through my ears?

I do not desire.

Always something—

I did nothing but wish, yet

I no longer desire anything.

To desire was my reason to live.

Lately, unlike in my youth,

I'll stop desiring what cannot be desired.

I had been desiring things that seemed possible to desire.

But now I have abandoned that desire as well.

I no longer desire anything.

In other words, I do not desire death.

Flower

Cattleya orchids and the like,

lovely roses and the like—

The room was filled with splendid get-well flowers.

Despite your kind intentions,

I’m sorry if this seems like nitpicking,

but to put it in human terms: commoners’

utterly ordinary yet valiant flowers,

unpampered and unflattered—

I want to meet flowers that live on their own.

In other words, I want to meet my friend.

In other words, I want to meet a precious part of myself.

There is a boat in the dream.

There is a boat in the dream.

With sails of pure white

How beautiful!

Tears overflow.

The wind blows forth, the waves rise up

That beautiful boat

appears to list and sink amid the waves

What can I do as it departs beyond the dream?

Blackboard.

The hospital room window

White curtains.

The afternoon sun streamed in.
It looked like a classroom.
Middle school years.

The young English teacher I liked

With a blackboard eraser, the chalk letters
He erased them cleanly.
With the reader tucked under his arm

With the afternoon sun on his shoulders,

"Well then," he said to everyone and left the classroom.

Exactly like that

I too want to depart from life.

He erased everything swiftly.

he said "Well then, everyone"

A literary samurai.

There was once a man known as a hero.

Nakano Shigeharu wrote in his poem,
praising the heroes of old.
I too praise heroes.
I am no such hero.
But since I am a literary samurai,

At this critical juncture,

I cannot indulge in cowardly reluctance and frantic struggling.

Come at me, minions!

Come forth, minions of death!
If you want to kill me, kill me! If you want to cut me down, cut me down!
Cut me down with honor!

Like the protagonist of a swordsman novel,
I cannot vanquish you all with a resounding cry.
Instead I shall be cleanly severed like some villain,
yet prize that very cleanness of cut.

However, even if cut down again and again
I won't die to order.
I shall glare fiercely at you all.
Oh God of Death - all that you do and accomplish -
I will persist in watching.

This is where it gets difficult.
This is what distinguishes a literary person from an ordinary samurai—the very reason one becomes a writer.
Serves you right!
This comes not from you but from me.

Come quickly!

Old man, come quickly!

Let’s play together.

Takerin-ya! Kura-san* What’s wrong?

Since you're not here, it's so dull, isn't it?

But here—there are no humans.

Am I...?

Kill me then—I understand.

Humans? Better there be none.

Not being noisy—it's better this way forever.

Old man’s favorite—the mole crickets are waiting.
Ladybugs and stag beetles are crawling all over.
Even if I die, they’ll all keep buzzing with life.

Come quickly, old man.

*The late Takeda Rintarou, close friend; the late Kurahashi Yaichi, poet

Deep within the conch shell

I want to crawl like a hermit crab into the cool, glossy depths of the white spiral interior within the conch shell—into that smooth, shining chill—and sleep motionless there. No matter who comes calling, I want to keep sleeping without opening the lid, secretly clutching a pearl, wishing to shrivel up and die just like that if I could. I'll fasten the lid tight, letting no one know a pearl lies hidden deep inside.

Stormy Shore

The faintly dark dawn's
Awakening is mine—
It evokes my birth:
An unblessed birth,
Unwelcomed,
Unreceived,
Of an illegitimate child,
A quiet birth.
When I die too,
equally quietly,
I will leave this world—
Quietly seen off by my wife alone

But in that hushed stillness—
The sea hurled its body against the shore
With breaking waves
That would mourn my death.

I was born of the stormy shore.

The winter morning I was born

The black Sea of Japan was raging violently.
Snow blasted sideways into the raging waves.

When I die too, surely—
The thunderous booming roar of waves
Just as in the time of my birth
Will come visiting to my bedside

Ⅲ

These are poems from after returning home.
At first he remained bedridden, but gradually began going out to the garden and taking walks nearby.
His feelings and thoughts also gradually began to change.
On one hand, there were moments when the contrast between light and dark in his state of mind grew more intense; there were also times when he could write poetry detached from himself.

Ando Tsugio wrote that poetry is the literature of old age.
For me, poetry is truly the literature of old age.
The reality of my poetry may differ from what Ando Tsugio calls the literature of old age, but that poetry is not solely the literature of youth is fortunate for both me and for poetry itself.

When I was very young, I too wrote poetry, but once I began writing novels, I abruptly stopped.
I had thought it harmful and toxic to the prose mentality, but eventually realizing that mistake, I returned to my self-styled poetry when I turned forty and have continued to this day.
It is truly the literature of old age.

Jovial Demons

"Don't tap the edge of the bowl with chopsticks.

The hungry ghosts are coming.

The precious meal will be devoured by hungry ghosts."

Grandmother said to me when I was an infant.

After eating, I lay still.

Now to my aged self,

Strange demons arrived.

Though they had made no sound at all,
Outside, snow was falling.
Without leaving footprints in the snow,
From the garden without wetting their feet,
They entered my room.
The slightly plump demons—
Their complexions glowed healthily; they showed no signs of starvation.
They must be living far better lives than someone like me.
I, sick and wasted, am the one who resembles a hungry ghost.

What had they come here to do?

Had they come to comfort me?

These jovial demons—

These jovial demons unsettled me more than skin-and-bones hungry ghosts.

They began doing the twist around my bed,

rapping my ribs with chopsticks as if playing a xylophone.

When the tone was poor,

they pressed their ears against my chest that lacked an esophagus.

In their midst of this examination, something startled them.

The demons all let out a shriek in unison—

They stumbled out of the room in a flurry.

No—they fled headlong from me.

Darkly-damp,

A darkly-damp cloud's shadow passed over the lawn.

At that moment before my eyes,

Something like a soft-shelled turtle crossed.

Why must it be a soft-shelled turtle?

Before long, over my chest on the bed in the room

A cloud's shadow that shouldn't have been casting passed slowly by.

Before my eyes, I withered away.

That was indeed a soft-shelled turtle.

It was a soft-shelled turtle that had its neck immediately chopped off and blood drained.

Like Enku carved Buddhist statues

Like Enku carved Buddhist statues

I want to create poetry
like Nana—the dog stricken with Hilaria—
who kept whimpering without cease;
I too want to plead through verse.

As oxalis had spread unbeknownst,
cloaking the ground in yellow blooms,
so I wish to make poems flower in profusion.

Like birds mid-flight releasing small droppings
from the sky without ceremony,
I want to scribble verses carefree—

At times like that departure gong
resounding through the docks,
I want to roar poetry raw into the void.

“Wash,” it says.

"It says to wash."

"It blows its stinking breath"

"The beast"

The beast extended legs matted with shaggy fur and crawling with fleas.
It commanded me—a human.
Very well.
I’ll do it.

I'll obey whatever you say.
But in exchange, beast—
Make me a fierce beast too—

In the Garden (1)

1

Grass Seeds

Small prayers ripen in the shade of leaves.

2

Prayer

That could be kept in a small casket like a jewel; could be kept even in a small heart.

3

Red maple buds

A cluster of small red hands reaching skyward—the form of prayers unaware they are prayers is beautiful.

The Space of the Past

Sand I'd scooped up
spilled through the gaps between my emaciated fingers
Time spilled grittily from me
What little precious time remained

But no matter how you barred my path
the view beyond shone too brightly for death's realm—
completely exposed

Though I couldn't tell if you were friend or foe
Why try to hide the scenery you see?

This was indeed no world of death
Yet not a soul remained there

Though there were apparently many guests in the past, they have now departed,
but in their place, countless cups remain boisterously.
Cups still holding leftover wine
surrounded by overturned empties.
The desolate splendor of post-feast disarray—

The overturned cups lay more numerous.

I clearly understood—
The empty cups hadn't emptied because they'd been overturned.
People had drained them completely before casting the cups aside.
Some had even been smashed against the floor after toasts.
Why had no one cleaned up?
The feast must have been truly joyous at its start.
That lingering joy still swayed unextinguished—

Is it that they have been left as they are to remain in that place?

That joy was already a thing of the past.

Yet even when time vanished along with people,

The past remained existing as space.

Just as I existed apart from myself, so too did my life exist.

The scenery of the past—seemingly joyful yet truly wretched—

Were you trying to hide this from me as my ally?

Or as my enemy, did you want to reject even past joys?

Are you my creation existing separate from my past?

The scenery gradually became enveloped in evening dusk.

As characters written on sand crumble,

All the cups too faded from view,

Only the hurried sound of time leaking away could be heard.

Wheels

A sunlit place

In a happy place

Wheels rusted red.

Small fruits, still unripe, were eager to fall from the branch.

The bulbs grew ever more eager to bury themselves.

(“Red Landscape Paintings”
4)

Bloodstained hands
Hands stained with red ink—hands that do nothing but proofread the past
Instead of red ink, he now uses his own blood
Self-Portrait with Ears

Pierre stabbed a friend at Place Pigalle.
The friend who had been recently flaunting his success.
The two were yakuza from Montmartre.
Pierre suddenly made his name.

At the same time, in the rural town of Arles away from Paris
Van Gogh cut off his own ear with a razor.
He had lost an argument with his friend Gauguin.
This was during Van Gogh's Arles period, when his greatest masterpieces were created.
He couldn't stab Gauguin like Pierre did.
Unlike Pierre, he was laughed at for his cowardly meekness
He was also diagnosed as mad, but
Van Gogh was not a yakuza but a painter.
Later, Van Gogh gazed upon his one-eared self and painted a self-portrait.

Proof that he was not a cowardly man.

Van Gogh's paintings sold only once during his lifetime.

The fact that he didn’t attempt to paint sellable works was precisely because he wasn’t cowardly.

Oh T-kun, you are fortunate.
Your ear remains intact,
Even when neurosis struck, you didn't die like Van Gogh,
Surviving until today by selling novels.
Moreover luckily, you weren't the yakuza Pierre.
Meiji era

The red ink of Hinomaru flags waved by elementary school children in the procession bled through the rain, while mud splattered thickly across the backs of their formal hakama.

Late Taishō period

The girl's hair smelled of gunpowder, and the violets in my terrorist's hand had withered.

Shōwa period

“Sis said this: ‘Sell your art，but never your body.’” I told the mustached customer: “I’ll sell my body，but never my art.”

Hymn

The hymn that adorned your head now scatters away like dandelion seeds.

Because spring has come.

Pilgrimage

The artificial esophagus across my chest

Like a subway running above ground,
Or perhaps like the city's comfortable expressways,
Emitting an artificial, dry light,
It spans from throat to stomach.
At night I remove this and sleep.
When that happens, even if I drink water, it no longer reaches my stomach.

So sometimes I put sleeping pills directly into my stomach.
In addition to my mouth, there is another mouth in my stomach.
Like surrealism—but this is my reality.

When I still had an esophagus

From Dhaka in East Pakistan by BOAC plane,

I flew to Calcutta, India.

The delta region of the Ganges River seen from the plane was as beautiful as a surrealist painting.

Of the great river that has flowed ceaselessly since primordial times,

the various distributaries of the estuary drawing on the earth

eerie and modernist lines,

colors of such subtlety they seem unimaginable as real entities—

nature unknowingly harbors surrealism within its depths.

From Calcutta, I went to Bodh Gaya.

Shakyamuni attained enlightenment beneath that tree’s shade.

The bodhi tree was still thriving lushly.

I picked one of those leaves as a souvenir.
There was a group of pilgrims who had come on foot from Tibet.
Even in the heat of India, they wore black robes tightly around themselves.
There were also Burmese monks wearing yellow robes.
To me, it was a nostalgic sight of Hīnayāna monks.
I was in Burma for a year during the war.

I often visited the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon.
Under the golden-glowing pagoda,
when I pressed my palms together before the marble Buddha statue and closed my eyes,
my head grew hazy from the heat.
In the shady breeze, drowsiness began to stir,
similar to the coma of a knocked-out boxer

I fell into a kind of ecstatic state.
The nature of that place—where scorching heat unleashed tremendous destructive power—
showed me the impermanence of all phenomena as visible reality.
A resignation distinct from enlightenment settled in my heart.
It was also at this time that my heart was struck by the beauty of the lotus flower.
That flower offered to Buddha possessed a beauty that seemed beyond this world—
a beauty of life different from artificial flowers,
yet bearing a surreal quality.
It was indeed a flower of the Pure Land—a flower that should exist alongside Buddha.

That actually existed on this earth.
As if Nirvana had been realized on this earth,
Ah, now I see.

Toward Nirvana

The pilgrims trudging across my artificial esophagus

I see that form, indistinguishable from both reality and surrealism, within my chest.

In my esophagus
In my esophagus
Who's the bastard that planted this cancer in me?
The one who planted me in this world

The man called father and I had never met.

My dead old man and I ended up never meeting in this world.

Given that I'm like this, was it any wonder I couldn't figure out who planted this cancer in me?

It must surely have been the work of someone who was my enemy.

That was the greatest enemy. Who was that enemy?

Throughout my life, I had made myself my own enemy.

I was to myself the most detestable enemy,
the most worthy enemy to fight,
an enemy I always wanted to keep attacking,
one I could never fully defeat no matter how hard I tried,
an enemy that kept rising against me no matter how many times I struck it down.
Now that greatest enemy attempts its final revenge upon me—
Did it plant this cancer in me?
That I kept attacking myself as an enemy—
Because the me that was an enemy proved the easiest target for my attacks.

It was an enemy more convenient to attack than any other.

For me, it was the easiest enemy to torment.

It was an enemy that offered resistance yet remained weak.

Despite being weak, it was an enemy that would never surrender.

No matter how much I beat it down, it kept rising again because my enemy was none other than myself.

Just as for Chekhov his blood was his enemy,

He cursed the ancestral serf blood flowing through Anton Chekhov’s veins.

No matter how much they were beaten with whips, they never rebelled.

From the servile blood of serfs who knew no rebellion
Chekhov wrote that he had wanted to escape throughout his life.
I too had wanted to escape from my blood.
My irredeemable violence was the inverted face of that servility.
I had wanted to escape from myself.
That was why I had made myself my enemy.

I lay felled by cancer now, with no outlet for my regret.
Yet this unexpected peace in my heart isn’t resignation.
I’ve fought long enough—
While battling the internal enemy that was myself
I fought just as fiercely against external foes.
So this isn’t about being worn out from battle now.
I’ve poured everything into living this life.
This calmness doesn’t come from being tired of life.
Whether I was violent—and therefore foolish—
the self that strove with every fiber

Now I want to quietly accept it as it is.

I want to silently accept myself as I am.

I think I have lived not out of pity, but fully and abundantly.

I should have noticed that sooner, though

To realize this, after all, required all the time leading up to today—

Or perhaps today’s desperate crisis was necessary.

That the enemy that was me had actually been my ally,

Or perhaps I should have made my enemy my ally,

It’s not that I have regrets here now.

due to having constantly treated myself as an enemy
I also think that my life was this very fulfillment.
A sense of fulfillment now gives me self-affirmation.

I had no choice but to live as myself while fighting myself.
Therefore, this self of mine has no choice but to die as myself.
Look at the garden trees—the pine is a pine.
A cherry is a cherry, and I am myself.
I could not have lived as anyone other than myself.
I, who have lived as myself,
Like trees that know no self-loathing

I am satisfied to die as myself, in my own way.

I will say to myself: You have lived steadfastly and well as yourself.
Close your eyes in peace.

In the Garden (II)

Grass I

The sky was truly near today. It felt close enough to touch. The grass knew this. That was why it humbly drooped its leaf tips.

Grass II

O Light

I cannot climb mountains to search for you.

O Light,

won't you stay among the blades of grass?

Grass III

I am now surrounded by life on all sides—front, back, left, and right. The garden brims over with life. Like a bird bathing in water, I now bathe in life upon the grass.

"From the Abyss of Death"

Supplement

"From the Abyss of Death"

Supplement comprises the poems preserved in the draft notebook for *From the Abyss of Death*.
I omitted some pieces that did not meet my expectations or that I wished to revise later，but as they seemed likely to be discarded without ever seeing the light of day，I decided to include them here．
However，*Horizon no Kao* and *Yoru no Mizu*
The three pieces titled *Poppies* were works I extracted from my draft notebook (written during my temporary hospitalization at Shichirigahama Keifūen after being discharged from Chiba) and submitted in place of prose when *Kindai Bungaku*’s final issue requested manuscripts．

Something terrifying

Something terrifying

It approached from behind.
When I ran away, it gave chase.

While fleeing in a panic,

The thing behind passed through me.

It departed from before me.

What was that thing?

It fled as if being chased by me.

As if fearing pursuit from me, it dashed away.

What is that thing?

I asked the person by the roadside.

“What might that be?”

“That is death,” declared the man with full dentures gravely.

I thought that was such a corny line.

Only those who know nothing of death go on about it.

But even I don’t know death.

I entered the inn. It was my old regular lodging.

“Welcome back,” said the white-haired clerk in a surprised tone.

The voice held surprise as if my return was unexpected.

The maid too, seeing my pale face, looked uneasy.
"Where have you been?" she said.
I walked down the corridor, making my slippers slap.
I recalled the sound of its footsteps walking across the damp ground.
My room was far.
It seemed I would never reach it.

In the hallway that reeks of something foul, I mutter.
Was that not life?

This landfill.

This landfill's ground never hardened.

The ground forever oozed,

not even grass grew.

He sensed there the buried sea's relentless grudge,

sensed there its persistence.

Even through mud's filth and ugliness,

the tenacious resolve was impressive.

The post-rain landfill's worsened quagmire -

footprints marked this morning's ground.

Someone had walked that dangerous waste.

That boldness too was striking.

What manner of resolve was this?

The footprints remained as gaping craters

They were heading straight toward the sea.
They disappeared unchanged into the sea.

Beast of the Heart

Oh Beast

Awaken swiftly from slumber
Ravage without mercy.
O Beast within my heart,
Roam your hunting grounds relentlessly.
While you lay dormant beneath death's shadow,
Your territory stood conquered in an instant.

To other beasts

To those beasts untouched by death

Your domain lies ravaged.

The Room of the Heart

For a Lifetime

It was never once opened.
A room that remains closed
exists within my heart.
Now at last the time has come to open it.

No—better to leave it as it is.
In that room, I have hidden myself.

Fallen hair

I walked and walked

When I finally reached the riverbank,

The bridge I relied on had collapsed.

That I could not cross to the opposite shore

Meant there was no escaping now.

In the middle of the river, now paradoxically reduced in volume after flooding,

On the solitary bridge pier,

Hair was caught.

That was unmistakably a woman’s fallen hair.

Attachment.

As I rolled a booger,

I couldn't quite bring myself to discard this.

Like a letter I had kept for some reason,

This trivial thing

It clings like attachment to life.

Sand

A main hall was built at nearby Engaku-ji Temple.

Leaning on his cane, he went to see it.

In Taisho 12’s great earthquake,
the old main hall was destroyed.
Since then,
it had remained an empty lot all along.
In that postwar winter’s desolation—

One morning when I went out for a walk,

From the sandy ground between the foundation stones
A faint chittering sound reached my ears.

Even though it was a faint sound—that’s precisely why it caught my ear.

The white frost that had settled on the ground melted in the morning sun.
The sand was chittering like insects.
It resembled the whisper of sand,
like murmured words upon the sand.

Before the rebuilt main hall—now I
remembered that uncanny yet delicate sound.
I also thought it better had it stayed a sandy vacant lot.

At the same time, a certain recent memory resurfaced.

Before I developed cancer

It was spring in Awa Kamogawa.

One afternoon, as I walked along the beach,

a small bird was walking along the sand, hopping and flying.

Maple-leaf-like footprints,

it strung them across the sand like written characters.

That was undoubtedly characters trying to convey something.

Although the bird's voice was drowned out by the sound of waves,
the voice of Engaku-ji Temple's sand
came to be associated with that of a small bird.
No voice could have been more fitting for this small bird.
The two were strangely harmonized.

The face of the horizon

From the horizon
A face peers out.
An eerie, inscrutable face—
but I know it.
Not a face I recognize,
yet one I must know.
Not vast like summer cumulonimbus clouds,
it refuses easy disappearance.
Seeming to vanish only to return.
Is it waiting for my death?
Not that I flatter myself so,
but it will keep watching until I die.
Just as blood keeps flowing from my heart,

(At K Hospital in Shichirigahama)

Night Water

Of dark night water,

The quiet surface
It suddenly began to bubble.
A single point before my eyes swelled thickly and steadily.
Clearly, it was enraged.
Glinting blackly in the darkness,
the water was enraged.
The pent-up sorrow
had at last turned to rage.
But even that would not last long.
The rage was mercilessly crushed.

The swelling of the water gradually subsided.

The whirlpool vanished without a trace,

The surface became even calmer than before.

Upon me watching, sorrow came surging.

It was now that it came crashing in like waves.

It made one think of life and death.
What true sorrow truly was—
it was precisely at this moment that I came to know.

Life, you who are crushed like anger
Your fragility, your brevity, your ferocity

Oh dark night water

Is death also such as this?

(At K Hospital in Shichirigahama)

Poppy Flowers

Already I lie underground.
A dog shits near where my forehead would be.
It's fine. It's fine.
Birds peck at grubs with their tiny beaks.
Even buried in earth, I feel a vague tickling.
Soon enough—no, sooner than that—roots
will thrust ruthlessly into my chest,
but still
upon my own corpse
I want to envision a scene of joy.
Like Van Gogh's grave—
won't you plant flowers?
When I made pilgrimage to Auvers,
tricolored pansies bloomed.

In the wheat field that Van Gogh painted near the grave,
amidst the young wheat ears, red poppies were blooming.
Plant these poppies on my head
From the white-flowered poppy's fruit
Opium can be extracted.
The narcotic heroin can be extracted.

(At K Hospital in Shichirigahama)

After *My Burial*

Since publishing my poetry collection *My Burial* (Shichōsha) in January 1963 through *From the Abyss of Death*
(*Gunzo*
August 1964 issue), I decided to collect here the poems published on various occasions during that period.
The final piece, *The Aged Starfish* (*Fūkei* magazine, November 1963 issue), was published immediately after my hospitalization. Many people seemed to think this poem had been written in preparation for cancer surgery; however, the truth is it was composed without any premonition or conscious awareness whatsoever.
Come to think of it, there were many poems in *My Burial* that contemplated death; now that I reflect on it, this seems eerie.

On that guy's back,

on that guy's back,

diagonally

tire marks were imprinted jet-black.

That guy was whistling away, but

that guy's heart had been run over by heavy truck tires—

it had been vigorously flattened with great gusto.

The proof lay in his cheerful whistling.

That carefree stride.

Even though tire marks showed on his back,

that guy didn't notice it.

That's why that guy was so cheerful, but—

You who knew everything from the beginning—go ahead and get yourself run over.

If you were to get run over and killed just once,

you could become as cheerful as that guy.

My woman

Diagonally on my face,
tire marks were imprinted.
“Not yet?”
“Not yet?” it whispered from behind.
In a honeyed voice, it whispered to me.

“Not yet?”
“What’s this ‘not yet’?”

I’m not taking a piss in some communal toilet or anything.

Behind me—still healthy and walking—

Stop sneaking up behind me with muffled footsteps.

What exactly is this foul-smelling thing?

What kind of face did it have?

I wanted to witness its true form, but—

As I turned around,
a flat, featureless face without eyes or nose—
it must have been watching.
And remaining completely unfazed,
it might say "Soon, right?"
Because I didn't want to let it utter those words

Am I enduring this without turning around?
It is concerning itself with its own

It might be asking me after all.
It remained foul-smelling.
It has some kind of misconception about me.
Thinking this keeps my mouth shut

It makes me walk briskly ahead without glancing sideways.

The swaying swing.

In the vacant lot at dusk,

the swing was swaying.

A child must have been riding it until just now, but—

the figure of the child who ran off was no longer visible.

That was not actually a child,

but something that knew everything.

Yet it remained invisible to human eyes.

That's right—even the swing existed there alongside that something.

In truth, it wanted to vanish from this place.

The swaying was due to that.
Before night concealed its appearance,
it wanted to leave there of its own accord.

There, a person would surely stop
There, where dark eyes gazed upon the swing.

Ugly Life

You are leaving me

Beyond the darkness, you will eventually vanish.
When you dissolve into the darkness,
I will dissolve here as I am

In the dazzling, scorching light

I will lose everything.

It was never your doing.

As beautiful you depart from within me,

It isn't because nothing remains for me.

It was solely because of this splendid light.

In this light that pours unreservedly even upon ugly life
I want to live as long as I can.

Confession

I looked around.

Hiding in the shadows,

A cat was stealthily puking.

Carelessly, I—

I saw it.

Not good. That wasn’t good.

The cat and I said at the same time.

“Which of these two do you—”

“Do you think this is my muttering?”

“You—writer who loves confessions—”

Shame

Everyone was slaughtered,

I alone wasn't killed—

The abandoned sick cow

In a corner of the slaughterhouse was ashamed.

To me—unable to say “Live on”—

That bastard said:

“So you’re just like me, huh?”

What a nasty look.

Kill that bastard.

Unable to say it, I—
The pig squealing and shrieking—
Despised myself as a coward clinging to life.

Organ
of early summer
twilight
from somewhere

When the organ stopped,

a distant dog

began to bark.

When the organ stopped,

Until then, my soul had been gazing outside.

My soul rose from the window and returned to where I lay sick. Like a delicate lost thing resurfacing when forgotten—meaningless to adults yet precious as childhood junk—the desire to be kind to everyone had returned to my chest. But that thing, like an old-fashioned soda bottle's glass marble, stuck in my throat until I couldn't breathe.

Someone kind—shatter me,
Like clumsily smashing a marble-sealed glass bottle,
A top-class label.

That's where you're headed now.
A spotless facility they're so proud of, clean as a hospital.
Step inside quietly and obediently.

When you leave that building,
You have become a beautiful commodity.
Even a top-class label has been affixed.
That design was truly painstakingly crafted.
A fortune has been spent on that printing.
Of course you wouldn’t want to die a brutal death.
You modern-day lover of cruelty,
I dislike being subjected to cruel treatment myself, but
You who lick your lips at others' cruelty,
Rest assured and go right in there.
Or perhaps you’d prefer having your skull split open with a log,

Skinned and hung upside down,

Would you rather be chopped into pieces and sold at a butcher’s shop?

If being canned displeases you, then by all means.

Whichever you prefer, I’d be happy to oblige.

How would you like to be killed?

We respect freedom.

You can freely choose either one.

Answer promptly, I demand.
Gluttonous pigs of ideology.
Hey—quick—gimme an answer already.

The Lost Tanuki

When I was a child,
a tanuki would carry a sake bottle,
dangling a bulging scrotum,
and come to the town liquor store to buy sake.
Through meeting so often, we had become friends, but—

When I became an adult,
The tanuki had disappeared somewhere.

When that tanuki got drunk,
it would dance the Kappore folk dance.
It would transform into a beautiful girl.

It used to delight young me.

"Great, great!" I clapped my hands.

“With this, it could easily deceive even human adults.”

“Deceiving people must be quite amusing,”

Suddenly, the tanuki put on a serious face

and used to say this to young me:

“Kid, that’s not right.”

“It’s not to deceive you humans that I transform.”

“You can’t deceive by trying to deceive.”

“This here’s my own little pleasure.”

“Just my own meager little pleasure.”

“Kid, look at that cherry tree.”
“That cherry tree isn’t blooming for people’s sake either.”
“Even though it usually endures such hardship,”
“Not showing its hardship through flowers is quite something.”
“From such a gnarled branch”
“It’s blooming such beautiful flowers.”
“Isn’t that a skillful transformation?”

The tanuki's words made no sense to me as a child.
Now I understand.
That tanuki too must have been harboring quite a lonesome feeling.

Now I understand this, but—
The Tanuki who would want me to say I understand is no longer here.
The Tanuki had already been lost from me.
The Tanuki would never return to me again.

Aged Starfish

Being crushed underfoot felt repulsive.

"You should throw me back to sea," they said—

That merciful contempt became unbearable.

I was once hailed as the ocean's star,

The vile creature that devoured clams,

Despised by you all,

I who was detested as not even fit for food
Now am neither hated nor resented.
I too am perfect in virtue and fortune—
My personality has softened,
All edges worn away,
The five star-shaped arms tattered.
And yet I carelessly got caught in a net.
I thought "Damned!" but—
No—wait. This is how it should be.
I've reconsidered—this way is better.

Having aged,

With my teeth chipped, I can't even eat the shellfish I like.

Sucking on seaweed stinking of heavy oil,

I had been living in shame.

Under the blazing sun on the sandy beach,

In the throes of writhing agony,

While recalling my former glory,

I want to meet my own dying moments.

Stars like jewels
That they once glittered in the night sky is now a thing of the past.
Now stars like white lice
cling to the dirty sky
The dignity of the stars of the sea is also a thing of the past.

Don't return me to the sea,
to the aged starfish.
Grant me a death caked in mud.