Japanese poetry

Octavio Paz's time in Japan, reopening the Mexican Embassy in Tokyo after WWII, led to a lifetime of collaborations with Japanese intellectuals and artists, beginning with his co-translation of Matsuo Basho's Oku-no hosomichi (as Sendas de Okú), and continuing on through a series of renshi/renga-inspired projects with artists such as Katayama Toshihiro. This essay demonstrates the lingering influence of the neo-renshi collaborative ethos on Paz's oeuvre in the half-century following his time in Japan.

In 1972, four anthologies of post-war Japanese poetry were brought out by British publishers: Thomas Fitzsimmons’s Japanese Poetry Now; Graeme Wilson and Atsumi Ikuko’s Three Contemporary Japanese Poets; Geoffrey Bownas and Mishima Yukio’s New Writing in Japan; and Kajima Shōzō, Lynn Guest and Harry Guest’s Post-War Japanese Poetry. This unprecedented interest in modern Japanese poetry formed part of what Ted Hughes called the ‘unique tidal wave’ of poetry translation in the 1960s and early 1970s. This spate of modern Japanese poetry translations resulted from the practice of British poets teaching in Japanese universities, from the increased post-war interest in modern Japanese art and literature, and the earlier importance of Japanese poetry for Anglo-American modernism, and Imagism in particular.

The tenets of the Imagists became widely influential after the war and informed the poetics of Penguin’s Poetry Editor, Nikos Stangos. In private correspondence he asked Harry Guest, co-editor of Post-War Japanese Poetry, to make the Japanese poems ‘into something more imagist’; he accompanied this request with an eight-page letter of suggested corrections to Guest’s submitted manuscript. Many of these suggestions sought to change the translations to accord with Imagist principles so that the Japanese poems would ‘more closely resemble contemporary English poetry’. Modern Japanese poetry had, however, evolved in a different direction, taking particular inspiration from French Symbolist, Dadaist and Surrealist poetry that did not usually employ the visual concretion Imagism demanded. An examination of Post-War Japanese Poetry not only reveals the prevalence of Imagist poetics in British poetry of this period; it presents a special case, as such a poetics had itself developed from an earlier encounter with Japanese poetry.

This thesis examines how, and to what extent, British cultural institutions, translators, publishers and readers were receptive to post-war Japanese poetry. It thus challenges the frequently held view at the time that British poetry was parochial. Post-War Japanese Poetry forms the focus of this thesis because it was brought out by a major global literary publisher; furthermore, Stangos and Guest’s discussions about how to translate the poems go to the heart of many vital questions concerning poetry translation. The thesis is structured around four different kinds of receptivity: the conditions that gave rise to the translations; the selection of poems; their translation; and the anthology’s reception. It seeks to make an intervention not only in the Anglophone understanding of post-war Japanese poetry, but also in the fields of translation studies and post-war British poetry. It explores a unique period when many of Britain’s most well-known poets lived in Japan and translated contemporary Japanese poetry for its largest literary publishers.

The research, which constitutes the first part of the author’s multivolume History of the New Japanese Poetry, traces the process of emergence and evolution of verse in the new forms after the Meiji Restoration. A totally new worldview forged in the fire of polemics on the pages of critical journals paved the way for the innovative aesthetics of the XX century Japan. The eloquent melodic Romanticist shintaishi poetry by Shimazaki Toson and Doi Bansui born from the synthesis of East and West, the lyrical masterpieces by the great Symbolists Kitahara Hakushu, Miki Rofu, Kinoshita Mokutaro and a brilliant constellation of other young talents laid the foundation for the modern Japanese poetry and poetics. The book is richly illustrated with portraits of the poets and original paintings.

The book, being the second part of the fundamental History of New Japanese Poetry, examines the developments in the realm of kindaishi and gendaishi verse of the Meiji – Taisho– early Showa period. The names of the great bards like Takamura Kotaro and Hagiwara Sakutaro, Nakano Shigeharu and Oguma Hideo, Murano Shiro and Nishiwaki Junzaburo , Miyoshi Tatsuji and Kaneko Mitsuharu are introduced along with the names of minor Japanese classics of the time. The concepts of the leading kindaishi and gendaishi schools analyzed in the monograph show the closest interaction of the Japanese authors with their counterparts in the West, which has resulted in the creative fusion of the indigenous and borrowed poetic traditions.The book is richly illustrated with portraits of the poets and lithographs by early modern artists.

This paper was originally written for the seminar Reading The Social Sciences, CURAPP-ESS - UMR 7319, University of Picardie Jules Verne, March 18th 2021.
Direction : Adam STEPHENSON, University Lecturer in English Studies, CORPUS - EA 4295.
Seminar organization committee : Sandra FONTANAUD, Data Engineer in sociology, CURAPP-ESS - UMR 7319, and Aude RIEDBERGER, PhD Student in sociology, CURAPP-ESS - UMR 7319.

The late Heian-period poet/monk Saigyō (西行1118-1190) has long been considered one of the most talented of Japan’s waka poets. His poetry and his legend have found their place in elite and popular culture, spanning social class as well as multiple fields of cultural production, such as poetry, travel literature, painting, woodblock prints, nō and kabuki, and Buddhist tales, to name a few. This study aims to present the reader with a critical analysis of Saigyō, his poetry, and his legend by answering several key questions. Who was the historical Saigyō that lived from 1118 to 1190? How did he become the famous monk and poet? What was it about his poetry that made him famous? How did his life influence his poetry? How did his poetry influence his life? Why did Saigyō become such a popular cultural figure after his death? What were the mechanisms of this process of mythologizing? What role did both his life and his poetry play in this process?
In part one of this dissertation, I provide a biographical sketch of Saigyō’s life. Part two is an analysis of Saigyō’s poetics. Here I identify the major elements of Saigyō’s style. I also illustrate the relationship between Saigyō’s life and his poetry. In part three, I illustrate the relationship between Saigyō’s poetry and the development of his legend. The weaving of poetry and life, poetic expression and spiritual journey, into a tapestry was begun by Saigyō himself. Saigyō provided the overall pattern for the tapestry of his life and his poetry. Japanese scholars have failed to recognize Saigyō’s hand in the determination of what the tapestry of his life and poetry would eventually become. Later generations of poets, monks, painters, and authors filled in the spaces, elaborated the patterns, and wove new and more colorful threads into this tapestry. It was always the intersections of the warp of the poet and his life, and the weft of the poems themselves, upon which later weavers tied their colorful threads of story.

The aim of this paper is to present and demonstrate various concepts of new nature as portrayed in modern Japanese tanka and haiku poetry. I attempt to demonstrate that even man-made objects surrounding humanity in modern times can play a role very similar to traditional natural elements in poetry. They can help express the feelings of poets, reflect perceptions of today’s world and enable readers to comprehend various aspects of life.

This is the second selection of our translations of Sagawa Chika’s poems. Our first selection was published as “Selected Translations of Sagawa Chika’s Poems I”, in June 2013, as a working paper series from Shiga University, which can be downloaded at http://mokuroku.biwako.shiga-u.ac.jp/WP/No192.pdf. The introduction to Sagawa’s poetry including her short biography can be read in “Preface” to “Selected Translations of Sagawa Chika’s Poems I”, both in English and in Japanese.

In the late 1780s, the renowned kyōka poet Hezutsu Tōsaku (1726–1789) looked back at his life and set about notating some of his memorable experiences and the characteristics of his age. The result was a presumably unfinished zuihitsu entitled Shin’ya meidan (A Retiree’s Chat). In this piece Tōsaku presents sixteen anecdotes and opinions regarding, among other things, famous writers, poets, thinkers, and artists of the past, renowned kabuki actors, connoisseurs and courtesans in Yoshiwara, rural poets and authors, personal friends, astute monks, conditions in Ezo (Hokkaido), and the benefits of city life. This wealth of subjects supplies not just a rare glimpse into the biography of a late-eighteenth century comic poet but also an unusually personal account of cultural life in Edo.

Visual and cultural analysis of Nihon no hana 日本の花(1946), a book pairing pictures and poetry by diverse artists and poets on the theme of flowers. The book is part of the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/462/title/1.

In his essays on the dynamics of cultural change, the semiotician Yuri Lotman proposes a model to explain the fact that when an area of culture— poetry, for example—develops a set of self-descriptions—such as poetry criticism, histories of poetry, and so on—that area of culture (or semiotic system, to use Lotman's term) is in a position to become rigidly self-repeating: once it draws up rules for itself, then there is the possibility that it will follow those rules. The semiotic system is described as having become rigidified, under such circumstances. Lotman posits another alternative: the semiotic system might instead choose to break or alter its own rules, renovating and transforming itself by incorporating elements from other semiotic systems. In this essay I argue that the appearance of modern Japanese free-verse poetry can be explained using a modified version of Lotman's model. It is common for historians of modern Japanese poetry to say that the poet Kawaji Ryūkō was the first to publish free-verse poetry in Japanese (in 1907). This essay places Ryūkō's work in context, characterizing it as a synthesis of a number of elements from the contemporary criticism—the principal among these being the current of negative criticism of Japanese poetry, on the one hand, and the current of positive response to Western free-verse poetry, on the other. By synthesizing elements from various strands of poetry and poetry criticism, Ryūkō created a poetic form that is now prevalent in the Japanese poetry establishment today.

Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” which he described as a “hokku,” is one of the most famous English-language poems of the twentieth century. Despite the wealth of scholarship devoted to this poem, however, Pound’s source for his interest in “hokku” and for the composition of “In a Station of the Metro” has not yet been established with certainty. Pound’s fellow Imagist poet F. S. Flint’s apparent role in introducing him to this form through his translations of “haikai” in 1908 and Flint’s claim that the group of poets to which they both belonged in 1909 wrote “dozens of tanka and haikai” of their own is given as the inspiration for Pound’s “hokku” by several commentators, including Helen Carr in The Verse Revolutionaries: Ezra Pound, H. D. & the Imagists in 2009. Pound always uses the term “hokku,” however, while Flint refers to these poems as “haikai.” Yoshinobu Hakutani observes this discrepancy in his book, Haiku and Modernist Poetics, also published in 2009, which argues that Yone Noguchi, rather than Flint, was the source for Pound’s interest in “hokku” because of Noguchi’s use of the term “hokku” rather than “haikai” and because Noguchi sent Pound a copy of his collection The Pilgrimage, which includes six of Noguchi’s English-language “Hokku.” Kiuchi Toru builds on Hakutani’s argument to propose that “none other than Noguchi” was Pound’s “hokku” source.

This article seeks to examine the validity of Hakutani and Kiuchi’s claims. One of the most significant obstacles to these is the dating of Pound’s composition of “In a Station of the Metro.” As Rupert Richard Arrowsmith has shown, Pound submitted the poem to Harriet Monroe on 13 October 1912 as part of his “Contemporania” series, which conflicts with Hakutani’s argument that Noguchi’s January 1913 article “What is a Hokku Poem?” influenced “In a Station of the Metro.” Moreover, the strict five-seven-five syllable pattern, three-line layout, and frequent use of archaisms, contractions, and abstractions in Noguchi’s “Hokku” contrast with Pound’s “hokku,” which appear in two lines. The only English translators of “hokku” to have presented them in two lines before 1912 were Basil Hall Chamberlain and F. V. Dickins. J. B. Harmer has previously suggested Chamberlain as a possible source for Pound’s interest in “hokku”; despite Harmer’s claim to the contrary, however, Chamberlain included among his translations a two-line version of Arakida Moritake’s “butterfly” hokku later quoted by Pound in his “Vorticism” essay. As well as comparing Hakutani’s and Kiuchi’s claims with Harmer’s, this article will further explore the possibility that Chamberlain was Pound’s “hokku” source by discussing the connections both make between “hokku” and Whistler and how this may have contributed to Pound’s presentation of “In a Station of the Metro” as a Whistlerian “arrangement.”

The article can be found on pages 85-99.

Resumen El presente artículo sostiene la hipótesis del haiku como vestigio poético, como posible respuesta a la pregunta ¿qué cosa es el haiku? Esta pregunta nos conduce a sistematizar brevemente la tradición poética japonesa con el fin de observar la evolución de las formas poéticas y de las pautas formales que las definen. Desde allí, se comprende que el haiku es producto de la tradición japonesa por sustracción, es decir, por ser un resto de aquellas complejas formas que conforman la tradición. A la vez, el haiku se define en relación con la influencia occidental. Para ello nos hemos detenido brevemente en la restauración del haiku propuesta por Masaoka Shiki para determinar allí el lugar del haiku en la coyuntura entre tradición e intercambio cultural. Seguidamente, determinada la definición del haiku como propia de principios de siglo XX, observaremos el papel que juega el Budismo Zen en cruza con la modernidad para el desarrollo del haiku. Para ello, nos detenemos especialmente en Santōka, el último monje-poeta mendicante de una tradición que él mismo trasgrede a través de los juegos que entraman la escritura de sus haiku al escapar a toda pauta formal. Al observar brevemente esta poética, repensamos nuestra hipótesis hacia el final de este trabajo. Palabras clave: haiku-forma poética-tradición poética japonesa-Santōka-Zen 1 Estudiante de Letras Modernas (FFyH, UNC). Integrante del Equipo de investigación "Figuras singulares: una cartografía para leer escrituras contemporáneas" dirigido por la Dra. Gabriela Milone (SECyT, UNC).

Esta é uma tentativa de discutir, por meio de exemplos da literatura japonesa clássica, moderna e contemporânea, alguns aspectos da representação literária da natureza. Acredita-se geralmente que a cultura do Japão é um culto da natureza, com raízes na religião nativa e em seus mitos, o que poderia levar uma maior consciência ecológica. No entanto, esse nexo causal é muito difícil de ser verificado. O conceito de “natureza secundária” de Shirane é usado para explicar por que as visões tradicionais da natureza tendem a ser estilizadas e modificadas para acomodarem os valores da sociedade. Ao mesmo tempo, uma leitura atenta dos preceitos budistas encontrados nos escritos de autores como Kamo no Chômei  e Miyazawa Kenji pode nos ajudar a encontrar os elementos ideológicos presentes na literatura do Japão que poderiam ser associados a uma versão pós-moderna, crítica e ecofriendly dos conceitos de literatura e de representação da natureza. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: teoria ecocrítica, budismo, xintoísmo, representações da natureza, poesia japonesa.

This is an attempt to discuss, through examples from classical, modern and contemporary Japanese literature, some aspects of the literary representation of nature. It is commonly believed that Japanese culture is a cult of nature, with roots in native religion and myths, which could have resulted in the development of a national sense of ecologic awareness; however, this may not always be the case, and the existence of a causal link might be difficult to establish. Shirane’s concept of a “secondary nature” is used to explain why traditional views of nature tend to be stylized and modified to accommodate the values of society. At the same time, an appraisal of Buddhist principles found in the writings of authors such as Kamo no Chomei and Miyazawa Kenji might help us find the ideological elements that could help create a postmodern, environment-friendly, version of the concepts of literature and the representation of nature.

In his article “Nihon ni okeru miraiha no shi to sono kaisetsu” (“Poetry of the Japanese Futurist School and its explanation”, "Kanjō", November 1916), Hagiwara Sakutarō used the label «Futurism» (miraiha) to comment on Yamamura Bochō’s poems collected in "Seisanryō hari" (The Sacred Prism, 1915). Sakutarō’s use of the word «miraiha», although extremely relevant as one of the first known occurrences of the term in the critical discourse of Japanese poetry, actually stems from a blurred understanding of what Futurism was in the first place. Sakutarō was probably influenced by contemporary accounts of the developments of European avant-garde movements, and by indigenous artistic discourse, where «miraiha» had soon become a diluted catch-word used to define every school generically opposed to Naturalism.

La presente investigación se propone abordar el haiku japonés como escritura poética del vacío en El monje desnudo (2006) de Taneda Santōka (1882-1940). A partir de discusiones que anteceden esta investigación se derivan las categorías teórico-análiticas para abordar el corpus. En primer lugar, la relación del haiku con el Zen y algunas aproximaciones críticas a la poética de Santōka que relacionan su haiku con la práctica Zen. De estos antecedentes, derivamos, la categoría teórico-analítica de experiencia del vacío que da cuenta de la relación del Zen con el haiku a partir de una pregunta por el lenguaje. Para ello, se desarrolla una genealogía del concepto de vacío, la profundización en la definición del mismo. Seguidamente, ahondamos en la relación del vacío con el lenguaje y el haiku en el marco del Zen. La segunda de las categorías planteadas deriva de los antecedentes que definen el haiku como forma poética y la denominamos con escritura poética. Esta cristaliza un concepto de escritura pertinente a la escritura no-alfabética, su traducción y los modos en que la escritura da lugar a lo poético. Para la sistematización de un concepto de escritura pertinente retomamos los aportes de Jacques Derrida (principalmente las nociones de différance, huella, traducción). Para reforzar y re-definir la potencialidad poética de la escritura japonesa, tomamos los aportes de Roldan Barthes (su comprensión de la idea de escritura, su relación con el signo vacío japonés y la idea de Matiz). Seguidamente, la articulación de las categorías planteas nos conducen a la configuración de una operación de lectura singular que denominamos como re-trazar, con la cual se ordena en una cartografía poética de Santōka, compuesta por de tres mapas donde se sistematizan las insistencias de los diferentes haikus: topografía, climatografía, coreografía.

Introductor, junto a Jun Tsuji, del dadaísmo en la literatura japonesa, Shinkichi Takahashi (Ehime,1901- Tokio, 1987) deja pronto atrás los influjos más estridentes de la vanguardia europea para convertir su poesía, ya en el ámbito de influencia del budismo zen, en un espacio de contemplación de la naturaleza y el mundo urbano del Japón de la postguerra. En su juventud, turbulenta y bohemia, una aguda crisis mental le lleva a pasar tres años recluido bajo el cuidado de su familia. A partir de 1935, atraído cada vez más por la práctica de la meditación, comienza a alternar la vida monacal con trabajos ocasionales en el periodismo. En 1952 tiene lugar su ordenamiento como monje rinzai zen, recibiendo de manos de su maestro Shizan el Inka Shômei, reconocimiento de su iluminación. A partir de entonces vivirá en el barrio tokiota de Nakano, dedicado a la escritura y al zen hasta su muerte.

Shinkichi Takahashi publicó más de 15 colecciones de poesía y numerosos ensayos, centrados en gran parte en el mundo espiritual y artístico del budismo zen. Títulos destacables de su obra poética son: Poemas de Shinkichi el dadaísta (Daisuto Shinkichi no shi, 1923), Festival de Gion (Gion Matsuri, 1926), Eclipse de sol (Nisshoku, 1934), Visita al templo (Jinja sanpai, 1941), Monte Kirishima (Kirishima, 1942), Padre y madre (Chichi haha, 1943), Torso (Dôtai, 1956), Dorada (Tai, 1962) y Gorrión (Suzume, 1966). Entre sus ensayos se incluyen Nihilidad (Komu, 1957), Poesía y Zen (Shi to zen, 1969), Zen y literatura (Zen to bungaku, 1970) y Dada y zen (Dada to zen, 1971).

Overview of women's poetry in contemporary Japan (Heisei era, 1989~), including introductions to and translations of poetry by Saihate Tahi, Misumi Mizuki, Ishiwata Kimi, Nagae Yūki, and Fuzuki Yumi.

Published in U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. Vol. 51, Summer 2017. 102-126.

FERRARI, Patricio; PITTELLA, Carlos, "Twenty-one Haikus by Fernando Pessoa" (2016). Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, No. 9, Spring, pp. 184-229. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0W957CZ

Is Part of:

Pessoa Plural―A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies, Issue 9

Twenty-one Haikus by Fernando Pessoa
[Vinte e um Haikus de Fernando Pessoa]

https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0W957CZ

ABSTRACT

We present here a corpus of twenty-one haikus written by Fernando Pessoa, sixteen of them in English (here published for the first time) and five of them in Portuguese (one of them previously unpublished)-each poem accompanied by facsimile and critical apparatus. The documents are preceded by an introduction which aims to reconstruct the direct and indirect influences of Yone Noguchi, Ezra Pound, Walter Pater and Rogelio Buendía on the Pessoan project of recreating, in English and Portuguese, this poetic form of Japanese origins.

RESUMO

Apresentamos aqui um corpus de vinte e um haikus escritos por Fernando Pessoa, dezesseis deles em inglês (aqui publicados pela primeira vez) e cinco deles em português (um desses inédito)-cada poema acompanhado de facsímile e aparato crítico-genético. Aos documentos precede uma apresentação que busca reconstruir as influências diretas e indiretas de Yone Noguchi, Ezra Pound, Walter Pater e Rogelio Buendía sobre o projeto pessoano de recriar, em inglês e português, esta forma poética de origem japonesa. * University of Lisbon, Center for Comparative Studies (Post-doctoral Research Fellowship funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) [the Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology] between 2013-2015. Currently in the MFA program at Brown University.

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Poetry anthology, The Road Home (帰路), by Mizuta Noriko (水田宗子), poems from 1980s to 2000s blending transnational and feminist sensibilities, natural and traditional images. Poems include, "Poem in Blue," "Mountain Witch’s Dream," "Addressless Renshi," and "Lobster Boiling". 

Originally published by Shichosha (2008). Sample poems and translations available at Poetry Kanto: http://poetrykanto.com/2015-issue/noriko-mizuto  .

On sale in Japan as of October 2015; available abroad Winter 2016.

A translation with critical introduction of Irisawa's landmark 1968 poem (first of two parts: second part in December 2017). The critical introduction (pp. 31-49) places the poem in social, literary critical, and political context, highlighting the poem's connection both with Japanese mythology/mythography and with Irisawa's poetic theory. The poem itself (pp. 51-65) was a parody of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," with a strong component of visual poetry. The second part (forthcoming) is a translation of Irisawa's 161 explanatory notes to the poem. Citation: Scott Mehl, "A Parody in the Ruins: A Translation of Irisawa Yasuo's Waga Izumo, Waga Chinkon (Part I)," in _Monument Nipponica_, vol. 72, no. 1 (2017), pp. 31-70.

Irisawa Yasuo provided 161 endnotes to his own poem, parodying the methodologies used in scholarly editions of classic texts. Citation: "A Translation of Irisawa Yasuo’s _Waga Izumo, Waga chinkon_ (Part II)." Monumenta Nipponica 72:2 (2017), pp. 223-264.

In the first half of the twentieth century, when Japanese and Arabic poets began writing free-verse poetry, many terms were proposed as labels for the new form. In addition to the calques on " free verse, " neologisms were created to name the new poetry. What is striking is that, in these two quite different literary spheres, a number of the proposed neologisms were the same: for example, in both Japanese and Arabic the terms prose poetry, modern poetry, and colloquial poetry were proposed (among others) as alternatives to the label free poetry. This essay provides an annotated list of the neologisms in Japanese and Arabic, with a list of English terms for comparison; and by referring to the contemporary Japanese and Arabic criticism on the topic of poetic innovation, this essay attempts to explain the similarity between the Japanese and Arabic neologisms. In short, the Japanese and Arabophone arguments in favour of adapting the free-verse form were based on similar premises regarding modernity, freedom, and a vision of literary history that was rooted in an evolutionary theory of genre development.

This essay by Stefan Zweig about Lafcadio Hearn serves as a perfect introduction to the life and work of this totally individual writer and critic. Zweig tells Hearn's story in a lively and thought-provoking way like few biographers ever do. He takes us from the impoverished writer in America, hopeless and out of his element, to the master of Japanese literature who finds a new lease of life for himself in Japan. Lafcadio Hearn comes across as an enigmatic and alluring figure, the American son of a Greek mother and Irish father, he is out of his place in the states yet makes the culture and literature and heritage of Japan his own, contributing more to the study of itss language and literature than any outsider had before. He tells the ghost stories of Japan, analyzes its myths and poetry, recounts its history and speaks of its traditions and mores in such an engaging way that anyone who reads his words will want to visit the land of Nippon. Stefan Zweig's essay has been translated from the German into English by Edouard d'Araille. It is hoped that this essay will entice more readers to discover the works of Lafcadio Hearn, in particular the book in which this introductory essay appears.

Matsuo Basho is the earliest and most revered of the great haiku masters. His impact on the form remains unmatched as his thinking continues to influence artists, philosophers, and students of aesthetics.

Suffering from depression and a persistent sense of loneliness, Basho’s work embodies wabi-sabi. While difficult to articulate, wabi-sabi, for Basho, concerns the pursuit of simplicity - “lightness” - and the beauty of loneliness, “akin to, but deeper than, nostalgia.”

Poems of Matsuo Basho is a short and varied collection of Basho’s haiku. Each translation is accompanied by the original Japanese text and English transliteration (romaji).

Author:  Matsuo Basho
Translator: Anthony Opal
Length: 12 pages
Language: Japanese / English
ISBN: 978-1-7356630-5-0

This book chapters explores the writing of three of Japan's most important and active poets--Wagō Ryōichi, Takahashi Mutsuo, and Arai Takako--and the poetry that they wrote in response to the Fukushima meltdown in 2011.

"Poetry in an Era of Nuclear Power: Three Poetic Responses to Fukushima," Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster, ed. Barbara Geilhorn and Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt (NY: Routledge, 2016) 144-61.

In my study, I investigate the strategies of empowerment within the literary field that were adopted by Yamamura Bochō (1884-1924), an author of shi (poetry in non-traditional forms) who ephemerally came to the fore of the Japanese literary scene (bundan) with the collection Seisanryōhari (The Holy Prism), published in 1915. I focus on Bochō’s articulation of a fantasy of empowerment by destruction and regeneration: such tropes are similar to the rhetorical strategies adopted by the European avant-garde movements, and, in evoking such categories as ‘terrorism’ or ‘anarchism’, they border the domains of early twentieth century political discourse. I analyze these tropes focusing on a genealogical perspective that involves both intertextual and historical research. It is argued that the rhetoric of antagonism and destruction can be a relevant focus in order to appreciate the modalities of construction of a modernist discourse from both a Japanese and comparative perspective.

On 15 November 2019, I received the privilege of presenting my translations of one tanka each by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) and Tsukamoto Kunio (1920-2005) at the Waseda University waka/tanka translation workshop The Power of Translation: Who’s Afraid of Poetry? Because of the Shiki translation, it was a great honour to participate in this event with Janine Beichman, who has written the best English-language biography of Shiki. These tanka represent two different approaches to an important concept for the development of this poetic form since the 1890s, shasei (‘sketching from life’). Whereas Shiki’s interest in shasei had a significant impact on tanka in the early twentieth century, Tsukamoto’s post-war work questioned this approach and advocated instead an embrace of artificiality in the manner of that other great but tragically short-lived littérateur of the 1890s, Oscar Wilde.  Just when Shiki was urging poets ‘to look for beautiful scenes in nature with the aim of copying reality’, having been influenced by Western naturalist painting, Wilde had recently proclaimed in ‘The Decay of Lying’ that ‘All bad art comes from returning to Life and nature’.  Wilde cites the Japanese ‘rejection of imitation’ as a model for an art that emphasises its own artificiality.  ‘The Decay of Lying’ was published in Intentions in 1891 together with ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison: A Study in Green’, the inspiration behind the 1965 collection, Midoriiro kenkyū (‘A Study in Green’), in which the Tsukamoto tanka I selected appears. This article will explore these differences in approach through my translations of Shiki’s and Tsukamoto’s tanka.

Wypływające z fin de siècle’owskiego doświadczenia kryzysu poznawczego pragnienie odkrywania obcego, innego… egzotycznego, skłaniało do refleksji nad możliwościami synkretyzmu różnych tradycji i otwarcie się na komunikację interkulturową. Myśl ta wyrażała się choćby w słowach łacińskiej sentencji Ex Oriente lux akcentującej ówczesne literackie i artystyczne zainteresowania szeroko pojmowanym Wschodem. Ważnym miejscem na mapie Orientu w okresie Młodej Polski była Japonia, która od drugiej połowy XIX wieku przestała być jedynie odległą i odizolowaną krainą na peryferiach Azji, a wzbudzała zachwyt świeżością i oryginalnością swojej kultury. Inspiracje „japonizmem” opartym na drzeworycie ukiyoe i japońskim teatrze, które znalazły się w sferze zainteresowania nie tylko zachodnich, ale również polskich kręgów artystycznych, zdominowały i wpłynęły na kształt kanonów ówczesnej twórczości artystyczno-literackiej. Jednym z przedstawicieli tego bardzo licznego grona młodopolskich popularyzatorów orientalizmu, a w szczególności japonizmu, był Remigiusz Erazm Kwiatkowski – poeta, tłumacz, dziennikarz i autor znakomitych przedwojennych opracowań poświęconych szeroko rozumianemu Wschodowi, którego całokształt aktywności zawodowej i twórczości można byłoby scharakteryzować słowami „oddany służbie Rzeczypospolitej, zafascynowany Orientem”.

This is the Extended Essay 'Goblin Poetry' from this unique collection of stories, essays and studies by American-turned-Japanese Author Lafcadio Hearn. It is an in-depth analysis and consideration of a sub-genre of Japanese Poetry by the ultimate expert on Japanese Culture. It features prominently in the book 'The Romance of the Milky Way' which is introduced by a bigraphical essay on the life and work of Lafcadio Hearn by modern German novelist Stefan Zweig (who provides an intelligent and deep-thinking portrayal of one of Japan's greatest imports). The volume includes full textual annotations and two portraits of the author (one drawing, one photograph). A beautifully edited book which is an inspiring joy to read. This essay, like the rest of the volume, has been meticulously edited by modern poet Edouard d'Araille, who has also translated Zweig's essay from German into English (also on Academia.edu).

Visual and cultural analysis of Shinshō Fuji  新頌富士 (1946), a book of poems on Mt. Fuji by Maeda Yugure that was designed and illustrated by artist Onchi Kōshirō. The book is part of the Pulverer Collection of Japanese Illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: http://pulverer.si.edu/node/460/title/1

A substantial part of the content of the eighth century poetry anthology, the Man’yōshū, consists of botanical imagery and references, with approximately 1500 of the 4500 poems in the anthology referring to one or more of about 150 species of plants. These plants, ranging from trees to flowers to grasses and beyond, form the key exhibits at a large number of botanical gardens throughout Japan, which are specifically dedicated to showcasing these plants in conjunction with the poems they inspire and reference (man’yō shokubutsuen). These establishments vary widely in type: some are part of larger public parks, some are attached to shrines, or temples, some are attached to museums of various types, and some are independent, but all are clearly intended to act as facilities to attract visitors to localities or institutions. They are, therefore, stimulators of Contents Tourism, that is, tourism inspired by media works, although the term is more usually associated with visits by fans of popular culture to sites appearing in film, television, or anime.
The role literature can play as a stimulator of tourism and travel activities has long been known, and in Japan, this literary travel is most closely associated with poetry, however, common feature in the analysis of this behaviour is to regard it as stimulated by the formation of an idealised image of a location through the consumption of the literary work, which in turn creates a desire to see the location for oneself. Man’yō botanical gardens, being dedicated to the objects referenced in poetry, form a different and unusual form of contents tourism facility.
This paper will report on a current research project exploring the interconnections between the waka texts of the Man’yōshū, the plants which they reference, the gardens which exhibit them, and the motivations for creating poetic tourism facilities.

Desde el examen de la pregunta por la idea de paisaje, se aborda la noción desde el contexto de la complejidad contemporánea, en una nueva concepción de la dialéctica forma-imagen para intentar definir unas "figuras constructivas" del paisaje.

Publicado en Formas nº 16. ISSN 1886-7693 y on-line en Noticias Arquitectura,  Arte y Diseño. Buenos Aires