English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Originally published:
This material was published on the Japanese website. Dates and notices in the text reflect the original publication.
This is a prose translation. Ten submitted tanka, three classical examples and song quotations remain in Japanese, in the source's order.
Romantic Poetry Forum: Spring, April 2021
Recorded April 17, 2021
Record and commentary: 河内裕二, Japan Romanticism Society
Around April 20 comes the solar term 「穀雨」, Grain Rain, named for spring rain that nourishes grain. Looking into rain at this season reveals many names: 「瑞雨」, synonymous with Grain Rain; 「甘雨」, nourishing plants; 「菜種梅雨」, falling when rapeseed flowers bloom; 「春霖」, prolonged spring rain; 「催花雨」, encouraging flowers to grow; and 「卯の花腐し」, long rain in the fourth month.
Unfortunately it rained on the day of the meeting, but Miura has many fields and extensive vegetable cultivation, so it was probably welcome rain for the plants. On April 17 from 1:30 p.m., the Miura Tanka Society and Japan Romanticism Society held a joint meeting at the Miura Working Citizens' Center. Six people attended from the Miura Tanka Society: President 三宅尚道, 加藤由良子, 嘉山光枝, 嶋田弘子, 清水和子 and 玉榮良江. From the Japan Romanticism Society came President 濱野成秋 and 河内裕二. 桜井艶子 of the Miura Tanka Society also submitted poems.
ゆく春の橋の上なるおぼろ月
黄砂のせいとつれないラジオ 由良子
The author is 加藤由良子. Does 「おぼろ月」 not make us hum the school song 『朧月夜』? Its words are by 高野辰之 and music by 岡野貞一. This pair also created wonderful Japanese songs such as 『故郷』『春が来た』 and 『春の小川』. 『日の丸の旗』, beginning 「白地に赤く日の丸染めて」, is theirs too.
加藤 herself first mentioned 『朧月夜』, saying, “It was not quite 「菜の花畠に入り日薄れ」, but…” Looking at the moon in the night sky, she had felt romantic about its haze. Then the radio reported that yellow dust had been detected even in Kantō for the first time in ten years. Learning that windborne dust caused the haze rather spoiled the mood. A moon blurred by dry desert sand, with its somewhat barren associations, certainly feels different from one veiled in atmospheric moisture such as mist or fog.
The Japanese have long been captivated by the beauty of the hazy moon. 『新古今和歌集』 too contains a poem about a misty moonlit night.
照りもせず曇りも果てぬ春の夜の
朧月夜にしくものぞなき 大江千里
Perhaps it is precisely our fondness for this soft light that explains the use of shōji screens in Japanese houses. 谷崎潤一郎 has an essay titled 『陰翳礼讃』. The Japanese do not much favor glaring brightness; they find beauty in things that glow within shadow.
満人の近くの店から漂へる
食欲そそる中華の匂ひ 光枝
Near the home of the author, 嘉山光枝, is a Chinese restaurant. At lunchtime, appetizing smells of Chinese cooking sometimes drift to her on the wind. This poem describes that ordinary everyday scene.
The opening 「満人の」 expands the image. The owners are Chinese, she says, but whether they come from Manchuria in the northeast is unknown. Deliberately placing their origin in Manchuria arouses interest in them. The word brings to mind the South Manchuria Railway, Manchukuo and the repatriates who risked their lives returning to Japan after the war. Sometimes romance, sometimes nightmare: for Japanese people, “Manchuria” has a special significance unlike other Chinese place names.
There is a children's song, 『ペチカ』, with words by 北原白秋 and music by 山田耕筰, beginning 「雪の降る夜は楽しいペチカ」. I had always thought it was about Russia, since a pechka is a Russian stove. Yet it was originally a school song included in 『満州唱歌集』, published in 1924, and is set in Manchuria at that time. Commissioned to make it, 白秋 and 耕筰 traveled there to do so. I learned that fact on this occasion.
病超へ遂げし娘の記録見て
揺れる母御の心測れり 和子
The author is 清水和子. She wrote this after hearing about swimmer 池江璃花子, who overcame leukemia and won at the national championships. She writes of the mother's feelings rather than the swimmer herself because, as a mother, she constantly worries about her own children and could not help thinking of the mother whose child became seriously ill.
“Young mothers today may be strong-minded and determined to see their daughters win. But I would think it enough for her to care for her body and simply be well, even if she could not go on swimming or compete in the Olympics,” 清水 says. Having lived through a time of food shortages, war and many deaths, her words “It would be enough for her simply to be well” carry weight. Even if ways of thinking differ by generation, as she says, parents' feelings for their children surely remain unchanged. The Manyoshu too has a poem like the following.1
あの人もこの人も「いい人ね」って
思える今日の元気な証拠 弘子
The author, 嶋田弘子, says she has recently come to think that tanka need not always be classical. Inspired by the free poems of 俵万智 and younger poets, she wrote one not bound to the 5–7–5–7–7 form. From experience she feels that when she cannot think well of others, she herself is not in very good shape, and she made that personal barometer into a poem. Knowing oneself is difficult for everyone. Here one recognizes one's condition through feelings toward others. Certainly, without room in one's own heart, kindness to others is difficult.
銀も金も玉も何せむに
まされる宝子にしかめやも 山上憶良
One of 山上憶良's 「子等を思う歌」, poems thinking of his children.
この世をば散りて去りたるさくらばな
実をば結ばめ春は来ずとも 成秋
A poem by President 濱野成秋. He expresses his feelings through cherry blossoms. The common Somei-yoshino cherry has beautiful flowers but bears no fruit. Will he too be finished once he falls like a cherry blossom? Even if he scatters and no spring comes, he wants to bear fruit and leave something to the next generation. Looking back at his work and other activities, he felt that little had borne fruit, he says, and this poem emerged. The participants sympathized, saying that though their paths differed, they shared the feeling.
『新古今和歌集』 includes a cherry-blossom poem by 後徳大寺左大臣.
はかなさをほかにもいはじ桜花
咲きては散りぬあはれ世の中 後徳大寺左大臣
It says that the world's transience can be compared to nothing but cherry blossoms. There is probably a connection with President 濱野's poem too.
だんボール入りし柔らか春キャベツ
家族総出の収穫すすむ 良江
The author is 玉榮良江. Her works always bring scenes vividly to mind, probably because of her skill in description. Miura has many cabbage fields, and scenes like this are common in spring. Cabbages are also harvested in summer, but 嘉山 says it is in spring that the whole family works, perhaps because speed is required. Tender, sweet spring cabbage, freshly picked, must of course taste wonderful.
相模湾一望にして春霞
湯舟につかり友と語らむ 艶子
A work by 櫻井艶子, absent this time. She says she composed it while feeling happy after an enjoyable trip to Atami with a friend. Like 玉榮's work, it brings the scene clearly before us, as though we were looking at a painting; nothing in the description is wasted. We can almost hear the friends talking. The use of the specific place name Sagami Bay succeeds too. It gives the work reality, and those who know the area can enjoy imagining what is visible on the sea—Izu Ōshima, the Izu Peninsula, the Miura Peninsula.
花時に自粛求むる時の疫に
太子偲びて現在を生きゆく 裕二
This year marks the 1,400th memorial anniversary of Prince Shōtoku's death, and a service was held at Hōryūji in Nara at the beginning of April. Though a once-in-a-century milestone, it was reduced in scale and held with infection precautions because of the coronavirus. I wrote this poem after seeing it on the news.
Even with the cherries blooming beautifully, we cannot go blossom viewing for the second year running, and avoiding contact and crowding makes even meeting people difficult. How long will this life continue? Japan is said to be unusual in relying on people's voluntary restraint and still achieving a degree of restriction on behavior. Calling it national character says little about why it became so. The first article of Prince Shōtoku's Seventeen-Article Constitution begins, “Harmony is to be valued.” Have the Japanese not inherited that spirit down to the present? The prince is said to have died of the epidemic raging at the time. According to 三宅's investigation, it seems to have been smallpox. He died at exactly my present age. Across fourteen hundred years, we must listen once more to his teachings and survive the pandemic. Those were my feelings in composing this poem.
夫とゆく揃いのマスクでコロナ禍を
浮世さだむや総合病院 弘子
Reading the opening, one imagines a close couple perhaps going on a trip together. In the latter part one realizes they are visiting a hospital, and the tension suddenly rises. This poem is by 嶋田弘子, whose husband was recently found to be ill and who went with him to the hospital. It is good to be able to go together, but the destination is a hospital, and during a pandemic. Both her husband's illness and the coronavirus are worrying. What can be done? The way the poem concludes with a large general hospital deciding their uncertain world is splendid.
自衛隊訓練生はひたすらに
パドル動かす春の潮に 尚道
The author is 三宅尚道. At the Self-Defense Forces' Takeyama base is the Ground Self-Defense Force's technical high school, to which students come from across the country, leaving their parents. At this time of year, he says, one often sees them canoeing in Nagai Bay in front of the school. They paddle desperately to drive the canoes forward, and differences in arm strength show clearly. New pupils who still look innocent undergo hard training and, by graduation, become strong in body and mind, leaving as fine Self-Defense Force personnel. Since they receive pay while enrolled, discipline and training must be quite severe. That severity comes through in 三宅's poem.
清水 observes that the combination is excellent: 「春の潮」 gives an impression of people playing leisurely on a warm sea, while 「ひたすらにパドル動かす」 shows the trainees earnestly tackling hard training in that very setting. She is right. One can picture young people at an age when they want to play, devoting themselves stoically to training while glancing at others enjoying themselves.
After the meeting we moved, as usual, to カフェ・キー, where we chatted for a while over tea.
In this session, reversing the order of phrases within the 5–7–5–7–7 pattern or changing words slightly seemed to tighten the poems considerably. President 濱野, who offered the advice, later apologized, but the changes seemed to turn a prose-like cadence into poetic tanka, giving everyone something to learn from. Reading everyone's work and hearing the feelings behind it, I too learned much from his advice about finding expressions that convey those feelings.
By the time we finished coffee and left the café, the rain had eased. Jōgashima was visible beyond the harbor. Today was truly 「雨はふるふる」. There was no sign of the coronavirus subsiding, but I was able to meet 清水 for the first time; she had previously been absent because she had not been allowed to go out. Once again, it was a very fruitful and fulfilling day.
1. Translation note: the source places 嶋田's contemporary poem between this introduction to a Manyoshu quotation and 山上憶良's poem. That original order is retained.
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.