Reciting Poetry with Yamakawa Tomiko

English translation of the prose

AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 19 December 2020.

Material from the Japanese website. Dates and references reflect the original publication. Quoted poems remain in Japanese.

Reciting poetry with Tomiko Yamakawa

14 December 2020 (No. 1939)
Seishu Hamano

As I confronted the discrepancies in the existential philosophies of Heidegger and Kierkegaard, I became increasingly conscious that Tomiko too had an unusually strong awareness of her own existence. That awareness reached its height when, suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, she knew she had little time left. Yet even before the arranged meeting with her husband—during the days when she competed with Akiko for Tekkan’s love—Tomiko recognized her loneliness and sank into it. Many readers must have noticed how her poems seem to rise from the depths of that desolation.

At her father’s urging she left the House of Myojo. Her short marriage, which should have been happy, was dark, and ended with her husband’s death. Even on returning to Myojo she constantly knew that she had no place there, and attached herself to Japan Women’s University as if it were a temple offering refuge. In every episode, she seems unable to find a way of living with her own existence.

For a literary person, nothing is more painful than wandering days spent savoring such loneliness: one’s daily life rising and falling on the waves of vagrancy. Precisely that awareness bursts forth as poetry.

Even when she rows out onto the open sea, she is ultimately like a boatman who has lost the rudder:

和田津みの真中に櫂をなげやりて
　　泣きて見ましな船しづむまで　登美子

Here too, Tomiko contemplates abandoning concern for the fate of her individual self, while gazing at the self that still cannot let go. Moved by pity for her figure, I composed:

わだつみに舵を絶へゐてこの一夜（ひとよ）
　　明日の一夜も占ふべきや　　　成秋

As I write this on a poetry strip, what must Tomiko feel? Toward evening it turns to snow; Tomiko, who has shared the boat, goes ashore and composes:

行き来する人も途絶へし夕暮は
　　窓打つ雪の音のみぞする　　　登美子

I answer with this poem:

大雪の積もれる夜ぞくもり窓
　　指の腹にてかりそめの雅樂（うた）　　成秋

At that courtly music, Tomiko turns her thoughts to the clear streams of the age of the mighty gods:

竜田川清き河瀬に綾錦
　　織るさざ波の美しきかな　　登美子

The name Tatsuta River also reminds me of boyhood outings with my affectionate father:

奈良かへり竜田川にてふと父は
　　車を降りて歩くもまぼろし　成秋

For some reason Tomiko’s voice darkens, as though revealing the chill of her circumstances:

今の吾は虹の色して一めんに
　　くもるが中にふたりはもえぬ

So it must have been. Her relationship with Tekkan was always half aflame, half chilled. Finding this too poignant, I offered encouragement:

われのみと思ひをりゐて沈めるや
　　翳り曇れる痛みぞ祓はめ　　成秋

End of No. 1939.