English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Originally published: 24 November 2020.
A historical report from the Japanese website. Dates and descriptions refer to the original publication. Quoted poems remain in Japanese.
Miura Tanka Association
21 November 2020 — Seishu Hamano
A poetry gathering and a talk: “On the Romantic Poet Tomiko Yamakawa”
At the tip of the Miura Peninsula, close to Jogashima, lies Misaki Port. Hakushu Kitahara once eloped and lived there in hiding. He was at the end of his heartbreak; those days of elopement were also days of despair, his mood bleak. Yet his first poetry monument was erected here, and Hakushu himself returned, filled with nostalgia, in 1941—the year of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When one fleeting event after another occurs in life, people long to travel.
It becomes painful to face the same familiar people in the place where one has always lived. The destination need not be as comfortable as heaven; even a place at the ends of hell, where one’s body wastes away, would do. One wants to go somewhere far away. If you wish to see sunsets and moonlit nights of that kind, come here. I drove there to give a talk on Tomiko Yamakawa as well.
The gathering began at 13:30 at the workers’ civic center.
“Everyone is here today,” master 三宅尚道 welcomed me with an excited voice.
The room had tables like those in a cooking classroom, and we could hear shigin recitation from the adjoining room.
ナラ枯れて赤茶に染まる樫の木に
リスが登れば枯葉舞い散る 光枝
It is autumn. This is a poem sketching from life. It is read aloud resonantly: trees, colors, animals. Within that movement, dry leaves flutter down. The English word “drift” suggests floating downward; it is neither “drop,” “fall,” nor “scatter.” The choice of 舞い散る comes close to that feeling and is charming.
あいみょんを聞きつつ深夜外に出る
秋季ただよいブルームーン高し 由良子
Here too is an autumn mood, with the bearing of the proprietress of a traditional inn and restaurant near the Misaki shore to which I invited you earlier. Light and darkness, earth and sky come into view. The blue moon has a Hawaiian air. For 加藤由良子, who married into this place sixty years ago, Misaki is more familiar than even a second home. The poetic phrase 恋しかるべき夜半の月かな comes to mind.
Hayama, meanwhile, is my second home. A great spider invading my sitting room seems to mock my decision to settle there for good. My heart is far from Kato’s, and I remember composing:
汝（な）が庵は密事（みそかごと）よと告げに寄る
大蜘蛛つまみし紙音（かみね）ぞ怖し 成秋
But I keep it to myself and listen closely to the proprietress.
雨上がり菊葉の珠の輝きは
朝の空気の為せる業なり 弘子
It has been a long time since I encountered such a tranquil work. It is stillness itself. In contrast to the movement and human breathing of the previous two poems, this work is motionless: static in itself. Should we call it a model of formal poetry?
新型の肺炎ゆゑに天国へ
旅立つときもマスクしてゆく 尚道
When I asked whether this was comic verse, the poet explained that he had been hospitalized during the past month. What resilience, to make a joke of it instead of treating it gravely. It makes one feel all the more serious. Do we think of masks as a fashion arising from COVID-19? No. Look at the scene in Floating Clouds, starring Hideko Takamine, in which she returns from French Indochina, stepping ashore from a battered ship with a battered rucksack. Everyone, without exception, is wearing a mask.
てらてらと輝く背中踊らせて
仕事に励むイルカたくまし 和子
Dolphin shows seem terribly pitiful. However one looks at it, human and dolphin intelligence seem equal. The difference is that humans are cunning and take the safe role, while honest dolphins risk their bodies. If a landing in water becomes a landing on solid ground, that is the end. The poet therefore wants to replace たくまし, “stalwart,” with いたまし, “pitiful.” Entirely understandable.
庭の木に伸びたるツルを引きゆけば
冬瓜三つ実をつけてをり 良江
A fine harvest. Misaki is peaceful: a true earthly paradise. Such a paradise cannot exist amid quarrels with in-laws or between husband and wife.
But if—only if—a family relationship like that in the following poem exists, one may also make poetry of it. Entering the world of tanka, here is one poem.
Though I came with my elder brother to meet Father at the station:
腹ちがひ折れ曲がりたる兄怖（こわ）し
父を迎へるゐてまほしかれ 成秋
We then turned to Tomiko Yamakawa.
Modern literary histories often state plausibly that Japanese romantic literature began in 1892, when Natsume Kinnosuke, later Soseki, introduced the American poet Whitman to Japan. This is mistaken. Nor, of course, did it begin with Takeo Arishima. We must go back not to such modern people but a thousand years, to the time of Princess Nukata. Beginning there, one should trace the Kokinshu and Shin Kokinshu, but we left that for another occasion. I spoke instead about why Tomiko came to Japan Women’s University and why, although Akiko and Masako regained their reputations, Tomiko alone ended her short, ill-fated life. People in Obama also have an active tanka association.
May the day come when we all gather together.
Both Misaki on the Miura Peninsula and Obama are port towns.
I behaved myself in Misaki, yet like Hakushu my heart felt a wanderer’s longing. As though at the end of such a journey, after the gathering we decided to go to the Key Coffee café in the dusk and have tea together.
I told no one, but the scene resembled Daphne, the Kushiro café in Yasuko Harada’s Banka.
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.