Three Sea Poems by Kaneko Misuzu (1903-1930)
Kaneko Misuzu was a Japanese poet of the early twentieth century who specialized in children’s poetry, but the kind of children’s poetry that rips out one’s guts when one rereads it as an adult. She has been described as a sort of Japanese Christina Rossetti, but instead of Rossetti’s explicit and orthodox religious sensibility she shows a more characteristically Japanese grounding of religious ideas and religious meaning in the world around her. In particular, since Kaneko was a lifelong resident of a small fishing town until her suicide during a custody battle with her abusive ex-husband, her poetry shows a special love of the sea. I have translated three of her “sea poems” below.
Kaneko Misuzu was a Japanese poet of the early twentieth century who specialized in children’s poetry, but the kind of children’s poetry that rips out one’s guts when one rereads it as an adult. She has been described as a sort of Japanese Christina Rossetti, but instead of Rossetti’s explicit and orthodox religious sensibility she shows a more characteristically Japanese grounding of religious ideas and religious meaning in the world around her. In particular, since Kaneko was a lifelong resident of a small fishing town until her suicide during a custody battle with her abusive ex-husband, her poetry shows a special love of the sea. I have translated three of her “sea poems” below.
The copyright situation for Kaneko’s work is somewhat more complicated than for other Japanese writers of her period, for reasons that I do not fully understand. For that reason, I’m putting these translations under a complete Creative Commons free-for-all provided they aren’t used for any commercial purposes; commercial purposes are what the current Japanese rights-holders explicitly advise against. My only motivation for posting these translations is a desire to share Kaneko’s poetry with the world, an altruistic approach that I think one owes her perhaps more than any of her contemporaries.
“The Whale Memorial Service” can also be found in the excellent collection Are You an Echo? by David Jacobson, Sally Ito, and Michiko Tsuboi, but I did not consult Are You an Echo? before translating my own version, in order to avoid rights issues in English.
To Sea
Grandpa went to sea.
Dad went to sea.
Big Brother went to sea.
Everyone, everyone went to sea.
Over the sea
Is a good place.
Once they've all gone out that way,
There's no coming home.
I, too, will soon
Grow up,
And go out to sea
In my turn.
❦
The Whale Memorial Service
When the late-spring flying fish season comes around,
They hold the Whale Memorial Service.
While the booming of the bells of the beachfront temple
Goes out over the surface of the water,
While the village fishermen put on their nice coats
And hurry to the beachfront temple,
As a whale calf all alone out on the water
Listens to the sound of those bells,
It weeps, weeps, heartsick
For its dead father and mother.
How far does the peal of the bell resound
Over the face of the sea?
❦
The Very End of the Sea
Over yonder’s where clouds spring up,
And where the rainbow has its root.
I want to get on a boat someday
And go to the very end of the sea.
It’s so far away, and it’s getting dark
And now I can’t see any of it…
You can harvest beautiful stars by hand,
Like picking red jujubes.
I want to go to the very end of the sea.