The Poetry of Postwar Japan

Theology once believed that “translation” could mean direct removal to heaven of the body without intervening death. All too often in being translated, the poem loses its life.

Literal translation of a poem into bare prose may help understanding, but the plain text of a literal version may not be accurate to the poem, for what a poet writes is not a literal account of his life, but imaginary version of it. Only a translator with imagination can truly translate the imaginative language of a poem.

In our hazardous times men of good mind and good will must talk to each other or die. I believe that poetry is the highest form of talk, and that translating it therefore an honor and privilege, as well as one of the toughest jobs known to man.

It is the duty of translation to recreate (not imitate) the original poem, which is in itself a recreation of the original idea-emotion which startled the poem out of the writer’s mind and into language. Words snarl, vivify, slash, cut, draw blood. Translation is an act which will be forever defeated, and must be forever attempted.

 

The Myth of Hiroshima

 

What are they looking for,

running to the summit of lost time?

Hundreds of people vaporized instantly

are walking in mid-air.

 

“We didn’t die.”

“We skipped over death in a flash and became spirits.”

“Give us a real, human death.”

 

One man’s shadow among hundreds is branded on stone steps.

 

“Why am I imprisoned in stone?”

“Where did my flesh go, separated from its shadow?”

“What must I wait for?

 

The 20^th century myth is stamped with fire.

Who will free this shadow from the stone?

Saga Nobuyuki

 

Mitsuko

 

That young girl who sang well

twenty years ago

became my bride twelve years ago.

A cheerful girl in pink woolen dress.

You’re still plump and cheerful

as if fate passes you by.

 

However we fail

your good intensions cancel all debts.

No matter what troubles we have

you believe they will be solved.

Affirming the future of cheerfulness

is your foremost virtue.

That has been a light in our long poor life.

 

Why are you so cheerful?

Do you believe in me

or in our life?

At times I look at you curiously,

but your plump body slowly walks the streets and your laughter is like

that girl in the pink woolen dress.

Sugawara Katsumi

 

Future

 

A June night drenches bare feet in dew:

the young lovers first embrace.

 

To love is to grow heavy.

Words drop down from the dead.

 

Everywhere, stark white flowers

smother fields in the night.

 

The couple walks through

fields swarming with blossoms.

 

Heavens of night fall

on each fresh kiss.

 

A dead man’s words can be heard through the twilight:

The future is further than the distance you have come.

Takiguchi Masako