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 of the meeting record and commentary. The ten tanka and quoted wording from them remain in Japanese.
Romantic Poetry Forum: Summer, July 2025
July 12, 2025
Record and commentary: 河内裕二, Japan Romanticism Society
July 12 is the day on which, one hundred years ago in 1925, Tokyo Broadcasting Station, now NHK, began regular radio broadcasting from Atagoyama in Tokyo. Provisional broadcasts had already been made from another location since March, but in July the new station building at Atagoyama was completed and the service switched to regular broadcasting. This marked the beginning of full-scale broadcasting in Japan, and July 12 has been designated “Regular Radio Broadcasting Day.” I do not know how many people listen to radio now. Yet many, like me, may hardly listen in daily life while still keeping a radio for emergencies. Behind the urgency to begin Japanese radio broadcasting lay the experience of the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. Communicating information during a disaster is important, and radio is an effective means of doing so. That remains unchanged.
The poetry meeting was held on July 12 at 1:30 at the Miura Working Citizens' Center. The source gives the contradictory time designation 「午後午前」, both afternoon and morning; it is not resolved here. Participants were the following nine people and 河内裕二: 三宅尚道, president of the Miura Tanka Society; 加藤由良子, 嘉山光枝, 嶋田弘子, 清水和子, 羽床員子 and 安田喜子; 濱野成秋, president of the Japan Romanticism Society; and ジュン葉山.
暑き日に亡夫の祥月墓参り
香花供え暫し手を合わせ 光枝
The author is 嘉山光枝. Her husband died in July, so this is the month of the anniversary of his death. The grave is some distance away and she cannot visit often, but this poem describes going in the heat, thinking she should at least visit during this anniversary month. During his lifetime her husband participated enthusiastically in the poetry group for about forty years, until his death in his sixties. His wife 光枝 now continues the activity. The poem is narrative and gives a somewhat explanatory impression, yet her unfeigned remembrance of her late husband comes through. Its lack of artifice makes the affection and sense of loss all the more strongly felt.
前の席に礼儀正しき男達
帽子にペガサス自衛隊と云う 由良子
The author is 加藤由良子. Self-Defense Force personnel encountered on trains and buses, dressed in uniform and appearing to act politely according to discipline, seem “different” from others of their generation. The poet regards them with respect, but her viewpoint moves from the men to the emblem on their caps. Its being the mythical Pegasus adds symbolism to the poem. It is unfortunate that 「云う」 in the closing phrase 「自衛隊と云う」 gives the poem a somewhat report-like impression rather than a poetic one.
ゴスペルはバイタリティの集合体
弾むリズムにその身をまかせ 員子
A poem by 羽床員子. Her conception of gospel as 「バイタリティの集合体」 probably comes from actually singing it. Is the image here, for example, something like the choir in the American comedy film 『天使にラブ・ソングを』? “Gospel” is an English word meaning the good news, and answering this word with another English borrowing, 「バイタリティ」, is excellent. If 「バイタリティ」 were replaced with the Japanese 「生命力」, the foreign atmosphere would diminish. The same applies to 「リズム」: 「拍子」 would not give the poem its rhythm. Having its keywords 「ゴスペル」「バイタリティ」「リズム」 in katakana creates both a foreign atmosphere and the poem's own “rhythm.” The poem itself is gospel-like.
亡き友が繋いでくれた仲間あり
我家にもひとつ五葉の松 弘子
The author is 嶋田弘子. After the death of an older man in their circle, his many bonsai were distributed among the members. This gave everyone a reason to gather. Remembering their late friend and the friendship brought together by the five-needle pines, the poem contains both sorrow at his death and consolation in the presence of companions. The needles of this pine grow in bundles of five; that image too works effectively in a poem about friendship.
今はもう昔話の相手もなく
出て来る夢はわたしの演出 和子
The author is 清水和子. The theme is solitude. The phrase 「昔話の相手もなく」 in the opening does not simply mean that there is no one to listen to her stories; it indicates that those who shared the past by living through the same era are gone. To make up for that absence, the dream-staging in the latter part takes place. Many poems express loss and loneliness after someone's death, but the unique expression 「夢はわたしの演出」 sets this one apart from the ordinary.
落日の中に青蘆擦るる音
入り江に寄する波をむかえて 喜子
A work by 安田喜子, depicting Ena Bay at the southern tip of the Miura Peninsula. The bay has tidal flats and thick stands of reeds. When she watched the waves approach, she felt not that they came toward the reeds but that the reeds welcomed them in. In the opening, alongside the visual contrast between the red sunset and green reeds, there is a contrast between fading light and the vitality of the lush reeds. This connects to the closing phrase 「波をむかえて」. The skill lies in using the green reeds to evoke the bay through both sight and sound.
進駐軍のっぽと踊る父母の顔
生家の秋のイガグリまだ生き 成秋
The author is President 濱野成秋. This is a poem remembering the postwar occupation. 「イガグリ」 may at first suggest a chestnut tree at the family home, but it means a close-cropped head: the poet himself as a boy. In the opening, the child's word 「のっぽ」 conveys familiarity while strongly impressing the occupation soldier's imposing physique upon us. The poet says that seeing his parents dance with these tall, powerful occupation troops made him realize that Japan had lost the war. At the party held in his family home, he was in charge of operating the gramophone. Against the opening's recollection, the latter part uses the humorous 「イガグリまだ生き」 to express the situation in which he alone remains alive of the people then present, including his parents. It is a poem with deep resonance, in which the age, family and self echo one another.
短冊につづりし願ひ忘れども
おもひのうちに笹はゆれゐぬ 裕二
My own poem. Seeing Tanabata decorations in town around the festival brings back the Tanabata events at school when I was a child. I remember writing wishes on paper strips and tying them to bamboo, but cannot recall what I wrote. I probably lacked the courage to write about a girl in my class I secretly liked on a decoration placed in the schoolyard for everyone to see. Perhaps I wrote a child's wish to become a professional baseball player, since I was then absorbed in baseball. The details are forgotten, but the sight of the decorated bamboo in the schoolyard remains vivid.
歌詠みの作りし梅干その人の
うたの如くに優しく単純 尚道
The author is 三宅尚道. As its subject suggests, the poem itself is not elaborate: simple words convey an unaffected warmth. At the meeting where it was presented, the author gave every participant pickled plums made from fruit grown in his own garden. Their flavor, just as the poem says, was simple and somehow nostalgic. The surprise that a poet has made pickled plums rather than a poem, and the idea that those plums nevertheless overlap with his poetry, are delightful.
満面に笑みを浮かべし母見れば
日頃の憂さは全て消えゆく 潤子
A poem by ジュン葉山. The author cares for her mother. The feeling that her heart is purified when she sees her mother's smile conveys her filial devotion and the depth of their bond. The strength of the poem is its frank expression of feeling without striving for technique. Its visual description is confined to the mother's smile, effectively communicating the author's feelings. The movement from an external scene to the inner self is natural, making this a poem that touches the heart.
In tanka, the final phrase condenses the theme and the author's feelings and creates resonance. It is no exaggeration to say that it determines the poem's completeness, and it is probably the part over which poets struggle most. Yet the opening phrase is just as important and difficult. As the entrance, it must draw readers into the poem's world while also leading naturally into what follows. A word that establishes a scene or season makes development easier, but can easily become commonplace and leave the whole poem seeming mediocre. Conversely, a novel, striking expression is difficult to receive and continue naturally. Lightness of sound and rhythm is also required. The opening draws in the reader's heart; the ending leaves a resonance. A good poem succeeds in both. That this must be achieved in just five and seven sound units is tanka's difficulty—and its appeal.
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.