"Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami" - Akiko Yosano
Ito Noe is a famously murdered Japanese anarchist that I'd never heard of because I know very little about Japanese anarchism or revolutionary politics or anything that isn't just about Naruto which is a joke but the joke doesn't go too far so I guess I am a big fucking dork otaku or some shit but that is gross and fetishizing and truly I more just appreciated a lot of manga as a fucking weird fat kid who couldn't look at queer shit unless it was hidden behind non-English term without my dad having an alert from the parental guidance software he installed on the computer but even before that you know reading Ranma 1/2 in a public library one day couldn't have been stopped by K9 web protection or a homophobic father's best guesses to keep their son as a non-fruit subject of his.
Anyway. I have been wanting to watch a lot of mid century Japanese films lately - the big guys Kurosawa, Ozu obviously - and Yoshishige Yoshida, the director of Eros + Massacre (a film documenting/dramatizing Noe and her husband's assassination), seems like a great place to start. In preparation, or mostly because my laptop screen is broken and I cannot spend money on it yet, I decided to try and read some of Noe's work and found only a single copy of her writing in English - an anthology of a socialist women's magazine she took part in called Bluestockings (as well as a small essay in the anarchist library). The anthology had biographies and pieces of writing from the mag and has a lot of backstory that isn't relevant for me to get into and I didn't love that it only had 3 pieces from Noe, one being the manifesto of the magazine and the only essay I really enjoyed, the other sort of feeling like a bad translation of a feminist work and a fiction piece that I haven't tried getting through yet. I was feeling disappointed with the book until I found Akiko Yosano's poetry in it.
Akiko Yosano, if this anthology and translator are right, is a relatively famous feminist erotic poet of the early 20th century who no one's heard of because Tangled Hair has only been checked out 11 times over the course of its 20 years in circulation at Wheaton and it's already hard enough to be recognized for being a poet unless you do something fleeting. Anyway (2 anyways already is a sign that I'm off task) this and the poems I found in Bluestockings kind of knocked me back. I too am trying to write small and sensational poetry, not for any specific reason beyond the fact that I enjoy being able to say more with less and get a feeling onto paper that feels profound or helps me understand what it was before I put it there. Yosano's poetry is personal and revealing. It's often a feeling of writing the same poem till it gets every version of the thought you had out. For some contextual understanding, her husband had multiple wives and lovers alongside her and she discusses it in mourning and empathy but supposedly had more mixed feelings before a certain wife's death. I want everyone to be intensely into Akiko's poetry and therefore, here's a few from this translation that stuck out to me, numbered according to their arrangement in this collection.
-
7
You have yet to touch
This soft flesh,
This throbbing blood -
Are you not lonely,
Expounder of the way?
9
Let poems bear witness:
Who dare deny the flower of the field
Its color red?
How moving!
Girls with sins in spring!
21
Whispering goodnight
The spring evening
And leaving the room,
I take from the rack
His kimono and try it on.
27
O you deep purple sleeves,
Why not embrace
This shoulder of a god
For a wider,
Wider view?
41
Do you know
Who bit her sleeve
At the Osaka inn
Reading your poem
That cold autumn day?
61
Incense smoke
Curling up round
The hair of my departed friend,
Hair that I envied
When she was alive.
80
In dreams at last
I'll grant her wish -
And whispering to my love
Asleep beside me,
I recite her poem.
91
The clear spring inside me
Overflowed,
Became muddy -
A child of sin you are
And so am I.
109
Disobeying God
Pointing to the sober
Green place of wisdom,
I gather
Purple violets this evening.
115
He lured me in
Yet brushed away the hand
That sought to touch -
Still, still,
The smell of his clothes, the gentle darkness!
118
My friend found poetry
At the end of her ordeal,
But for me
Only black death
Ahead.
141
My wish:
To smear
Poisoned honey
On the lips of youth
Seeking love!
151
They don't deserve
The name Love,
But I had sweet dreams,
Once of a poet,
Once of a painter.
158
My pain
In passing her house,
But even more,
The glance back at the hedge of yellow flowers
Looming in the dark.
Anyway. I have been wanting to watch a lot of mid century Japanese films lately - the big guys Kurosawa, Ozu obviously - and Yoshishige Yoshida, the director of Eros + Massacre (a film documenting/dramatizing Noe and her husband's assassination), seems like a great place to start. In preparation, or mostly because my laptop screen is broken and I cannot spend money on it yet, I decided to try and read some of Noe's work and found only a single copy of her writing in English - an anthology of a socialist women's magazine she took part in called Bluestockings (as well as a small essay in the anarchist library). The anthology had biographies and pieces of writing from the mag and has a lot of backstory that isn't relevant for me to get into and I didn't love that it only had 3 pieces from Noe, one being the manifesto of the magazine and the only essay I really enjoyed, the other sort of feeling like a bad translation of a feminist work and a fiction piece that I haven't tried getting through yet. I was feeling disappointed with the book until I found Akiko Yosano's poetry in it.
Akiko Yosano, if this anthology and translator are right, is a relatively famous feminist erotic poet of the early 20th century who no one's heard of because Tangled Hair has only been checked out 11 times over the course of its 20 years in circulation at Wheaton and it's already hard enough to be recognized for being a poet unless you do something fleeting. Anyway (2 anyways already is a sign that I'm off task) this and the poems I found in Bluestockings kind of knocked me back. I too am trying to write small and sensational poetry, not for any specific reason beyond the fact that I enjoy being able to say more with less and get a feeling onto paper that feels profound or helps me understand what it was before I put it there. Yosano's poetry is personal and revealing. It's often a feeling of writing the same poem till it gets every version of the thought you had out. For some contextual understanding, her husband had multiple wives and lovers alongside her and she discusses it in mourning and empathy but supposedly had more mixed feelings before a certain wife's death. I want everyone to be intensely into Akiko's poetry and therefore, here's a few from this translation that stuck out to me, numbered according to their arrangement in this collection.
-
7
You have yet to touch
This soft flesh,
This throbbing blood -
Are you not lonely,
Expounder of the way?
9
Let poems bear witness:
Who dare deny the flower of the field
Its color red?
How moving!
Girls with sins in spring!
21
Whispering goodnight
The spring evening
And leaving the room,
I take from the rack
His kimono and try it on.
27
O you deep purple sleeves,
Why not embrace
This shoulder of a god
For a wider,
Wider view?
41
Do you know
Who bit her sleeve
At the Osaka inn
Reading your poem
That cold autumn day?
61
Incense smoke
Curling up round
The hair of my departed friend,
Hair that I envied
When she was alive.
80
In dreams at last
I'll grant her wish -
And whispering to my love
Asleep beside me,
I recite her poem.
91
The clear spring inside me
Overflowed,
Became muddy -
A child of sin you are
And so am I.
109
Disobeying God
Pointing to the sober
Green place of wisdom,
I gather
Purple violets this evening.
115
He lured me in
Yet brushed away the hand
That sought to touch -
Still, still,
The smell of his clothes, the gentle darkness!
118
My friend found poetry
At the end of her ordeal,
But for me
Only black death
Ahead.
141
My wish:
To smear
Poisoned honey
On the lips of youth
Seeking love!
151
They don't deserve
The name Love,
But I had sweet dreams,
Once of a poet,
Once of a painter.
158
My pain
In passing her house,
But even more,
The glance back at the hedge of yellow flowers
Looming in the dark.
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