Two Poems about War—Yosano Akiko (1878-1942)
I promised these translations over two years ago in the introduction to my translation of three poems from Yosano’s Bara to Hanako collection. The juxtaposition displays a political evolution that is also a decay of the poet’s literary powers. Yosano was, for most of her life, a leftist and feminist poet best known for her antiwar poem “You Must Not Die” (“Kimi shinitamau koto nakare,” 『君死にたまふことなかれ』 in the orthography of the time) and her collection of feminist erotic poetry Tangled Hair (みだれ髪 Midaregami). Late in life she abruptly went down the 1930s Japanese equivalent of the rightist Facebook boomer pipeline. The result was “Citizens of Japan, a Morning Song” (“Nihon kokumin, asa no uta,” 『日本の国民、朝の歌 』), twenty highly mannered, formally controlled lines of cliché-storm edgy fascist garbage extolling the virtues of blowing yourself up and firing machine guns at Chinese civilians.
My translations of “You Must Not Die” (1904) and “Citizens of Japan, a Morning Song” (1932) follow. I’m electing to put them under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. Anybody may copy, distribute, display, perform, and make derivative works and remixes based on these translations only if they attribute the translation to both Yosano Akiko and me. Anybody may distribute derivative works under a license not more restrictive than this license.
I promised these translations over two years ago in the introduction to my translation of three poems from Yosano’s Bara to Hanako collection. The juxtaposition displays a political evolution that is also a decay of the poet’s literary powers. Yosano was, for most of her life, a leftist and feminist poet best known for her antiwar poem “You Must Not Die” (“Kimi shinitamau koto nakare,” 『君死にたまふことなかれ』 in the orthography of the time) and her collection of feminist erotic poetry Tangled Hair (みだれ髪 Midaregami). Late in life she abruptly went down the 1930s Japanese equivalent of the rightist Facebook boomer pipeline. The result was “Citizens of Japan, a Morning Song” (“Nihon kokumin, asa no uta,” 『日本の国民、朝の歌 』), twenty highly mannered, formally controlled lines of cliché-storm edgy fascist garbage extolling the virtues of blowing yourself up and firing machine guns at Chinese civilians.
My translations of “You Must Not Die” (1904) and “Citizens of Japan, a Morning Song” (1932) follow. I’m electing to put them under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. Anybody may copy, distribute, display, perform, and make derivative works and remixes based on these translations only if they attribute the translation to both Yosano Akiko and me. Anybody may distribute derivative works under a license not more restrictive than this license.
You Must Not Die
O little brother, for whom I cry,
You must not die!
Last-born, with a special measure of our parents’ love,
Yet our parents gave you a sword
And taught you—what?
To kill, and kill, and then to die?
Was it for this that they raised you to twenty-four?
As proud proprietor now of the Sakai store,
A local notable,
And inheritor of our parents’ name,
You must not die!
What does it matter to you,
A merchant inheritor,
Whether or not Port Arthur falls?
You should know by now that that is not our family’s way.
You must not die!
His Majesty the Emperor does not himself
Go into battle;
He commands other men to shed other men’s blood,
As is the way of beasts.
He tells us death is a glory to mortal men.
If his august heart holds such deep compassion,
How could he think this?
O little brother, there in battle,
You must not die!
Our mother lags behind our father
In life’s long autumn;
It pains me to see her wail for you.
While His Majesty does well for himself,
Our mother’s white hair grows.
In the shadow of the shop curtain
Your delicate young bride hunches over and weeps.
Have you forgotten? Do you remember?
You were together only ten months;
Think on what that does to a maiden’s heart.
There is only one of you, irreplaceable.
Once and for all I implore you,
You must not die!
❦
Citizens of Japan, a Morning Song
O the staunchness of the Emperor’s Glorious Reign™! Wake up, human hearts!
It’s a world ablaze with a sense of responsibility—a world with just one goal: “Sincerity”!
Cut to pieces the vain mouth-flapping! Smash the dreams of compromise (more like cuck-promise)!
Know how to go on the right track—charge into a hundred hardships!
One’s body is just the one soldier, but…! When you grasp the destroying gun
You enter into a dance with the barbed wire entanglements! That body is strewn like powder!
One’s body is just the one field officer, but…! Don’t be taken in by the enemy’s mercy!
Your body scatters, Nobler Than A Flower™! You can leverage A Samurai’s Honor™!
And it’s not just those with you! There are like-minded patriots
Wherever the Imperial Japanese Army goes! North, south, rise up, gird your loins!
Indeed, I’m just one good example of this—we, too, The Women Behind The Men With The Guns™— [lit. “we of the home front”]
Each one of us is zealous for the work we have to do! I redouble my very own courage!
Citizens who aren’t the troops—we’re letting out blood from our sharpened hearts!
Bit by bit, holding onto our lives—unstintingly devoted to our country!
For example, my song right here—holding a destroying gun,
Leaning into the barbed wire—and opening fire! May it share in that feeling!
A helpless woman like me, too—I feel this way!
Not to mention what surpassing excels it all—citizens who succeed to The Glorious Ways Of Our Ancestors™!
O the staunchness of the Emperor’s Glorious Reign™! Wake up, human hearts!
It’s a world ablaze with a sense of responsibility—a world with just one goal: “Sincerity”!
Three poems from “Roses and Hanako”—Yosano Akiko (1878-1942)
These translations, like my translation of “Aomori Elegy III,” I undertook almost a decade ago for an undergraduate final. I stand by the way I translated these a bit more strongly than by the way I translated “Aomori Elegy” due to the simpler language. Yosano was a pioneering Modernist poet, but these poems were for her young daughter and most of the language in them is very direct. Think of this as a belated holiday upload; Children’s Day in Japan is May 5.
These translations, like my translation of “Aomori Elegy III,” I undertook almost a decade ago for an undergraduate final. I stand by the way I translated these a bit more strongly than by the way I translated “Aomori Elegy” due to the simpler language. Yosano was a pioneering Modernist poet, but these poems were for her young daughter and most of the language in them is very direct. Think of this as a belated holiday upload; Children’s Day in Japan is May 5.
Yosano was for most of her life a progressive and feminist figure; unfortunately, in the last ten or twelve years of her life she veered sharply to the right. She died strongly supportive of Japan’s war aims in the Pacific Theater of World War II. I do not condone her views from this late period or the writing that she produced based on those views; a future upload will include my translations of an early antiwar poem and a late pro-war poem so that readers of English can see for themselves both the changes in Yosano’s beliefs and the decay of her poetic powers. However, the poems in Bara to Hanako (薔薇と華子 in prewar orthography) predate all that. The collection appears in volume 6 of her 2007 Complete Works (全集 zenshū); the poems in it were composed around 1927.
To my knowledge, Bara to Hanako has never had a translation published before and is in the public domain in Japan, whose copyright regime is the lifetime of the author plus seventy years. I’m electing to put these translations under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. Anybody may copy, distribute, display, perform, and make derivative works and remixes based on these translations only if they attribute the translation to both Yosano Akiko and me. Anybody may distribute derivative works under a license not more restrictive than this license.
Roses and Hanako
The rose blossoms in Hanako’s garden,
because they are roses that Hanako planted
bloom looking just like her.
Their color is the color in Hanako’s cheeks,
the blossoms are in Hanako’s lips,
looking just like her, rose blossoms.
The rose blossoms in Hanako’s garden,
when the roses are pretty, if the sun too
scatters down its golden oil,
when the roses are pretty, a zephyr of air
comes to clothe them with the gauzy silk
in waves that cannot be seen by the eye.
In keeping with Hanako’s singing-day
the roses too take fragrant breaths
piping their voices like Hanako,
and in keeping with Hanako’s dancing-day
the roses too gently shake their forms
swaying like Hanako.
And on days when Hanako is out
they cover the eyes in which tears have welled,
those motionless downcast rose blossoms.
The meekness of the roses’ hearts,
this too is just like Hanako.
The rose blossoms in Hanako’s garden.
❦
Aeroplane
There, there, the passing aeroplane,
today too oblique to the city,
quavers with its wind-cutting sound,
with nimble carriage, way up on high
the fine form with outspread wings.
Put an opera glass to your eye,
and if you lift your eyes to the young passengers
who with thick stomachs took to the roads in the sky,
from the somewhat twisted fuselage,
sparkling golden reflections shine brilliantly.
The naïveté of the young passengers,
forsaking the hindmost, forgetting death,
not stopping for an instant, becoming
a new power they go flying on.
Forward, to the future, at full speed.
❦
Autumn is Come
Cool, cool, autumn is come,
Hanako’s beloved autumn is come.
The sky, of course, and the colors of the sun
and the water and the air and the blowing wind
neatly arrayed, clear up altogether.
Still more if it is a quiet night
little Hanako sits and reads
interesting fairy tales, and beside her
are the moon’s chilly golden color
and the insects’ dingdong ringing voices.
As thought up by little Hanako,
as when amidst the bamboo the beautiful
Princess Kaguya was found,
it is just that kind of an autumn day.
Cool, cool, autumn is come.