Hagiwara Sakutarou - Collected Poetry

The Hudson Review, Inc
Translations from Hagiwara Sakutaro

Author(s): Graeme Wilson
Source: The Hudson Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 253-259
Published by: The Hudson Review, Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3849407
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GRAEME WILSON
Translations from Hagiwara Sakutaro
The poetry of Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) is still little known

outside Japan, but within Japan he is regarded as either the best
or (by such conservative critics as prefer the quintessential and
untranslatable Japanese-ness of Kitahara Hakushu) at least the
second best lyric poet to have emerged since contact with the
outside world was re-established exactly a century ago. But it is
fair to add that even the Japanese, whose nerves are tougher
and whose hearts more lonely than any else I know, tend to re-
gard Hagiwara's spirit as "too black," his work as a {tblaze of
darkness."
The general policy of the Meiji regime (1868-1912) was to

promote that integration of "Western learning and the Japanese
spirit" in which they saw the best future for Japan. In the poetic
field the immediate result of that policy was a flood of imitations
of European work. This New Style Poetry (Shintaishi) aban?
doned traditional Japanese poetic forms, the five-lined tanka
and the three-lined haiku, to produce Japanese versions of
Shakespeare, the English Romantics, Goethe, the French Symbol?
ists and even Longfellow's "Hiawatha." Shintaishi experimented
very tentatively with substituting for the traditional literary lan?
guage derived from Chinese models (bungotai) the actual language
spoken by the Japanese. But even its most daring experiments
were still patterned out of lines of five or seven syllables, the so-
called seven-five metrical rhythm (shichi go cho) which was
regarded as natural to the Japanese language.
Hagiwara's early poems were, inevitably, all in tanka or haiku
form; but in 1913 he began to produce those unmistakeably
modem poems on which his lasting reputation rests. His first
book, Barking at the Moon (Tsuki ni Hoeru), appeared in 1917.
It made an immediate impact, involved a brush with the Imperial
Censor over two allegedly "corrupting" poems, and is still accepted
as his most characteristic work. The poems were, in fact, pre?
cisely that successful combination of Western and Japanese ele-
254 THE HUDSON REVIEW
ments at which the Meiji policy-mak

the first Japanese poet to produce wor
part of the Japanese lyric tradition,
untraditional form, untraditional
metric rhythms. But the originality
in being the first successfully to es
past. It contained also an element of
in Japanese prosody; and it reflec
beauty and unprecedented violence
the terror and loveliness of the world.
Having abandoned not only tradit
metric rhythms but also their asso
poetic ideas, Hagiwara is sometimes crit
tual content and, in particular, for an
Pathetic Fallacy. Though his dislike o
physics is very much in conformity
tradition (which, from the time of t
of 905, set its face against the dida
exemplified in the eighth-century
Okura), it is equally relevant to stre
cerned to maintain logical or philoso
lyricists of Hagiwara's humanistic (o
pathies might well not think that Fa
taught/' wrote Fujiwara no Tameie in
"that the composition of poetry does
learning; but arises solely from the h
generations of his predecessors the
dictum that the heart has reasons reason does not know.
Hagiwara's middle-period poetry, notably that in Blue Cat
and To Dream of a Butterfly (both published in 1923), con?
firmed him as the best poet of his day; but his later work (such
as that in The Ice Island of 1934) contains imagery organized
into something close to argument, a surprising re-employment
of that literary language from which he had led the escape and a
consequent silencing of his earlier singing quality under the
clanging of bungotai. In the increasingly nationalistic atmosphere
of the pre-war years, these developments were praised in Japan
as signs of a more "masculine" manner; but there can be little
doubt that they represent a retrogression. The best of his later
work was not found, or published, until after his death.
GRAEME WILSON 255
It is clear, I think, that Hagiw

greatest poets of Japan (a land, it h
would get into the national antho
but also a poet of world signifi
the traditional Japanese lyrical in
tanka to the freer expression an
of Western tradition contains less
poets working in both traditions.
painful degree, the poet's one ess
feel first what all can see and und
to them. It is, to my mind, total
so dark, so terrible a beauty. The
of reality: it will not alter merely to
MURDER CASE
There sounds a shot of pistol

In the faraway sky; and then
A pistol-shot again.
Two pistol-shots; and my

Detective dressed in glass
Warps in from that clear sky,
Vitrescent but to find
Behind the window-pane

He takes such pains to pass
The floorboards cut from crystal.
Between the fingers wind

Ribbons of blood more blue
Than words for blue contain,
And from the glazen dew
That glints like cellophane
On that sad woman's corpse
A chill chill cricket chirps.
One morning of an early

November, dressed in glass,
The sad detective, surly
From sadnesses, came down
And, where the two roads cross
To quatrify the town,
Turned. At his point of turning
An autumn fountain waited.
Already isolated
In knowingness, he only
Can feel the real bereavement,
The long slow wrench concerning
Identity's decay.
Look, on the distant lonely

Acres of marble pavement
The villain, quick as silver,
Glides silverly away.
GREEN FLUTE
Over the evening field

The elephants, long-eared,
Troop slowly into night.
The yellow evening moon

Limps up from afternoon
To stand at last revealed
Clear yellow but yet bleared
By waverings, the slight
Wind-winnowing of the light.
Girl in this evening scene,

Are you not saddened by
Its seep of loneliness?
Here is a little flute

Whose music is pure green.
Blow on it gently, sigh
GRAEME WILSON 257
Along its hollows. See,

Its quavered cadences,
Its shaky melody,
Call down from that clear sk
A cold, an absolute
Quintessence of distress.
From some far sea of yearni

A ghostliness appears.
With slow appalling pad
It lurks towards us, turning
More nasty as it nears,
Seeming at last to be
A cat without a head
That staggers in the dead
Black shadows of this sad
Unseemly cemetery.
Girl, I could easily

In such a place concerning
Grief and the end of day,
Grief and the night returning,
To death's menagerie
Stagger away.
TO DREAM OF A BUTTERFLY
The butterfly, small-faced and ugly-faced

With black long feelers, weightily let spread
Like papers in the room, its large thick wing
I came awake, and in my lone white bed
Quietly, quietly let the dream be traced
Back to its larva, its belittlings.
Back to that autumn where my griefs begin;

A lorn dusk saddened as the lights subside,
An old house rotting and a crying tot,
The helpless soul of a small child that cried
Like some damp frog from grass run riot i

The rotting garden of a house on rot.
In that child's heart the most heart-rendin

Seemed to be soothed by those small light
Edges of distant water; and I cried
Through long long hours of dream.
In some new room
A butterfly shakes out enormous wings,

Spreading, like papers, their thick whiteness wide.
DAWN
From pain of long disease

The face is spider-webbed.
Below the waist the ebbed

Flesh has contracted to
Thin shadow-shapes, and these
Shaped shadows peter out
In nothings, in grey dream....
Above the waist there sprout

Things bushy, things that seem
Like brambles of bamboo.
The rotted hands are thin
And every piece and part,
Lips, knees and nails and heart,
Are smashed and battered in.
The moon is up today,

The day-moon's in the sky.
Its dawnly feeble ray,
Dim as a hand-lamp, glows
Weak as from over-load
And somewhere far away,
Lifting its muzzle high,
A huge white dog gives tongue..
GRAEME WILSON 259
From desolation wrung,

Its desolation flows
Along the empty road,
Cry upon howling cry.
SEASIDE HOTEL
As though afloat upon

The coast-woods of red pine,
Far off, as far away
As shimmering can shine,
Sombre, the combers shone.
How, bathed in that far glow,

Dare one in passage pray?
How serve with hurried prayer
That shiningness, that slow
Sea-pulse which robes the bare
But bright-as-shoulderbone
Beaches of Echigo?
Finishing supper alone

In the underwater gloom
Of the hotel livingroom,
Suddenly things came right.
I rose; turned on the light.
IN THE MOUNTAINS
October, at the fading of the year,

Waits for my prayers and silences.
The birds and fishes disappear
Into their fasting distances
And autumn flowers fade. Their colours seep
To lend the whitening air an opal shine.
Nothing, not even prayer, dare run too deep.
Touch but a Bible, it turns argentine.

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The Hudson Review, Inc

Translations from Hagiwara Sakutaro

Translations from Hagiwara Sakutaro

The poetry of Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942) is still little known

The general policy of the Meiji regime (1868-1912) was to

ments at which the Meiji policy-mak

It is clear, I think, that Hagiw

There sounds a shot of pistol

Two pistol-shots; and my

Behind the window-pane

Between the fingers wind

One morning of an early

Look, on the distant lonely

Over the evening field

The yellow evening moon

Girl in this evening scene,

Here is a little flute

Along its hollows. See,

From some far sea of yearni

Girl, I could easily

The butterfly, small-faced and ugly-faced

Back to that autumn where my griefs begin;

Like some damp frog from grass run riot i

In that child's heart the most heart-rendin

A butterfly shakes out enormous wings,

From pain of long disease

Below the waist the ebbed

Above the waist there sprout

The moon is up today,

From desolation wrung,

As though afloat upon

How, bathed in that far glow,

Finishing supper alone

I rose; turned on the light.

October, at the fading of the year,

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