The Color of Salade

The earliest form of poetry in Japan has at first reading the look of casual, off the cuff expression. This same characteristic is visible in much of modern and contemporary poems, with the impression of bare simplicity and unstudied form that hides or negates meaning beyond that of a momentary observance by the poet. But despite the camouflage that suggests quickly jotted words and lines, traditional Japanese poetry is a form fraught with rules of composition. Many of the modern poets have thrown off those rules, and consistent with the times and the idea of artistic freedom, produce poems in a style more familiar to Western readers. Ishikawa Takuboku is one modern Japanese poet responsible for putting the first cracks and breaks in the old rule book of poetic composition.

Safe bet to say that the Japanese poem most familiar to readers in Europe and the US is the haiku. It has even been adopted by a large number of non-Japanese poets, many of whom may never have even visited the country of origin. But then who says you have to visit Russia to learn how to make borscht? The haiku is basically a shortening of the older waka or tanka form of thirty-one syllables in five lines, a composition using only the first three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. This is a Japanese syllable count and has nothing to do with English translations or English originals. In this sense it is difficult to put a finger on the count, but here is an example of the longer waka showing a thirty-one syllable count:

HI-SA-KA-TA-NO (5) On this early day in spring

HI-KA-RI-NO-DO-KE-KI (7) When the radiance of the air

HA-RU-NO-HI-NI (5) breathes tranquility,

SHI-ZU-GO-KO-RO-NA-KU (7) Why should the cherry petals flutter

HA-NA-NO-CHI-RU-RA-N (7) With unsettled heart to earth

Syllable count was not the only tradition in early poetry. There are lists of words that were allowed for use and others that were not allowed. Seasonal words were important as well, and categories of words linked to others by association. Composition could at times be complicated by tradition.

Takuboku Ishikawa did not write haiku, but tanka, the thirty-one syllable poem. He lived at a time (1886-1912) when many of the old rules—cultural as well as literary—were being broken and he broke many of those rules himself. A major poet of the modern Meiji period of his country’s history he saw himself surrounded on all sides by innovation. Had he lived longer his influence would perhaps have been even stronger, still his poems show a spirit eager to break out of the established conventions of poetry. Ishikawa published his first book of poetry at the age of eighteen. He died from tuberculosis at twenty-six. The five poems below are from his collection, Sad Toys, published two months after his death in 1912.

Like some train across a wild waste

This agony

Now and then through my mind!

Recoiling

From a stethoscope—

As if some hidden thought were being pried loose.

Delightful

The color of salade!

Chopsticks in hand and yet—

Though I closed my eyes,

Nothing crossed my mind…

Only this emptiness on opening them again

All my past unreal, invented, made up—

Even that pretense

Gives no comfort to this mind!

A Special Affinity

One of those golden days in Tokyo, with hints of an invigorating spring now blowing our way, no more than two weeks over the horizon. Just the time for a walk along the Kanda River, through Inokashira Park and on to Kichijôji. A good stretch of the legs and a chance to see in trees and river how the season is growing toward bloom.

And so I get a close-up look at the many cherry trees that make the Kanda something more than unremarkable, and give it that touch of splendor with the harmony of blossoms and water. But mid-March is too early for that sweet combination, branches all a shiver with buds still not ready to reveal their countless pink faces.

The Japanese have a special affinity with the cherry blossom, something that is all but ancient in their culture and tradition. These days the appreciation of spring and the cherry blossoms has taken on a slightly different form, but the recognition of these immemorial flowers is probably buried deep in the soul of all but a scant few Japanese.

From Japan’s earliest literature the cherry blossom has been endowed with a special character that resonates with human experience. It was not only poets who elevated the flower’s qualities, but warriors of the feudal age as well held the cherry blossom to be the perfect symbol of life and death. With its exquisite transience this fragile blossom mirrored the warrior’s likelihood of sudden death in battle. Here one moment, gone the next, or in the words of Macbeth, “Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow…”

Turning to a modern expression of meaning in the spring blossoms, poet Tawara Machi’s 31 syllable tanka puts a different slant on it:

As if in this park

nothing at all has happened

the cherry blossoms

have bloomed, blossomed, scattered;

sakura sakura sakura…

Tawara’s cherry blossoms are seemingly indifferent to her personal concerns. And that is perhaps how very many young Japanese today look at the blossoms of spring. These days hana-mi (flower viewing) parties revolve around chug-a-lug drinking, karaoke and attention more to cell phones than overhead blossoms.

Times change, yet I continue to look for the lost.