When the haze of spring evening Enfolds the feet of the western mountains, Then am I lonely for you.
I see the haze in the east And in the west; Spring has returned, But you have not.
So deep was my thought That for two days I did not dress my hair. Was it sad, I wonder, At my neglect?
To think that from opposite ends of the earth We two are looking at the selfsame moon! How helpless mortals are!
Out in the bright spring weather The other women play with their children. I pick wildflowers alone.
Spring night. Silence. The rustle of my dress Falling to the floor. Silence.
All the blood in my body is frozen; Only the cold sword of reason Flashes within me.
It is futile to shed tears. I shall gaze at the clear moon, Forgetting everything.
I do not know If it be the fire of God Or the fire of Satan? But where its light leads me I will go.
I am wrapped in silk The color of flame, But my body—my bosom— Is cold.
The sinking sun Is the soul of a giant; Like my soul It is bloody and burning.
Kujō Takeko (1887-1928) was born in Kyōto; her father was Ōtani Kōson, the head of the Honganji-ha Jōdo Shinshū branch of Japanese Buddhism, and her mother was the daughter of a samurai; as a result she was encouraged to study at what would become the Kyōto Women’s University. As a teenager she co-founded one of the first 婦人会 (Fujinkai; ‘Buddhist Women’s Associations’) within Jodo Shinshu Buddhism, a major Buddhist school headquartered at the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyōto, and became active in humanitarian work, particularly during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, helping soldiers and families who had lost their sons and fathers in combat.
In 1909 Takeko was betrothed to Baron Kujō Yoshimasa—in an arranged marriage— and moved to London while Yoshimasa studied at Cambridge University. After a year she returned to Japan without Yoshimasa, and the two lived apart for most of their lives. During the 1910s, Takeko studied tanka under Nobutsuna Sasaki, and her work would go on to be a significant influence on the shintai’shi (“new poetry”) and shin’tanka (“new tanka”) movements.
During the 1920s Takeko published two solo collections of tanka—金鈴 (Kin’rei; ‘Golden Bell’, 1920) and 薫染 (Kun’zen; ‘Good Influence’, 1928)— and a play 洛北 (Rakuhoku; ‘North Kyōto’, 1925) before contracting blood poisoning in 1928 due to overexertion during the reconstruction efforts after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, and died not long after. The last years of her life were spent setting up the Asoka Hospital in Tokyō, one the first “modern” medical centres in Japan, which opened in 1930, two years after Kujō’s passing.
The translations were done by Glenn Hughes and Yozan T. Iwasaki, and use a ‘free form’ structure of 3-5 short to medium length lines, to approximate the 32 kana of tanka. While classical tanka were typically printed in one-line, with an internal 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm, shin’tanka of the 1910s and 1920s frequently employed alternate structures—in both Japan and America—such as Takuboku Ishikawa’s Japanese three-line tanka, and Yone Noguchi and Jun Fujita’s four-line English-language tanka. Hughes and Iwasaki were also influenced by Imagist poetics, which had itself been influenced by tanka and haiku translations of the late-1800s and early-1900s, a decade or two earlier.
“A considerable number of tanka and hokku have been translated into English, especially during this century. Some of these translations, which have given pleasure to innumerable readers, and hints to many poets, have been cast in conventional Occidental forms. The rhymed quatrain has been employed most frequently. Now such renderings seem to the present translators inappropriate. An uncharacteristic musical value is introduced by the use of rhyme, and the difficult matter of giving accurate expression to the content is made doubly difficult by adherence to a definite stanza form.
“[Instead, we feel] ‘free verse’ poems, as brief as possible, not too musical nor yet too prosaic, seem best to convey to Western ears the sense and effect of the original. Fully cognizant of the inadequacy of any method of translation, we commend these miniatures to those who admire the delicate and impressionistic in poetry.” (Glenn Hughes, 1927)
Forgotten Poets is very proud to announce the first published edition of Hughes and Iwasaki’s translations of ‘new tanka’ poets Kujō Takeko, Akiko Yosano, and Akiko Yanagiwara, in over 100 years. Including the 1927 collection, Three Women Poets of Modern Japan, in its entirety, and various other translations of Kujō, Yosano, and Yanagiwara published between 1923-1928 (and originally left out of the book), for a total of over 120 tanka; with restored illustrations by Eiko Yonemura, a Japanese-born artist living in America in the late-1920s. Available now in both paperback and ebook!
This week’s “after poem”—a very ‘free’ tanka sequence—is also inspired by the work of Orrin Préjean, a contemporary English-language haikai (specifically, senryū and tanka) and shintai’shi poet from Louisiana, who’s work I am currently editing into a book. He’s previously published 3 collections—which I highly recommend—and posts a variety of poems on BlueSky. In a similar tradition to Hughes & Iwasaki, Orrin writes shin’tanka in unrhymed rhythms within a variety of lineages and lineations.
—: After Kujō Takeko & Orrin Préjean :— A Tanka Sequence by Dick Whyte ❖ walking to see a dead shark— sudden fragrance of life ❖ children on the river's edge— becoming rock, becoming mud, becoming algae ❖ bank of black swans—everyone family ❖ dog with nose in rocks— ancient the smell of salt ❖ dead starfish returned to the river— let me be as lucky this time ❖ seagull filled sky— this fragmented world like a scream into the clouds ❖ charred wood damp on the sand— this life's about the same ❖ untangling the fishing line— her father calls me son ❖ say thankyou to the river—at least twice ❖ already feels like summer— the iridescence of roses in a garden, the iridescence of this feeling ❖
Forgotten Poems & Prints: a living anthology of obscure and out-of-print short poems & prints from the late-1800s and early-1900s.
┌ MORE TANKA ┐
The Origins of Haiku Part 2 - Tanka
Last week we talked about chōka (lit. ‘long poem’) and hanka. This week we are taking a closer look at the history of Japanese tanka (lit. ‘short poem’), the great-grandparent of haiku . . .
Claire Bu Zard - 3 Short Poems (1917-1921)
—: A Question :— Did you ever lie in a man’s arms and hate him; And mend your children’s clothes And look out across the front lawn And wonder dully what you’d get for lunch . . .
Yorozu Tsurumi - 4 Tanka (1926)
—: Autumn :— The hills dressed in autumn fire Burn crimson. A curved leaf flutters— Falling. . .
Edward Storer - 7 Short Poems (1907-22)
—: Fragment :— And you shall be A poet, and shall come Nearest of all To reading what May ne’er be read. . .
Lewis Alexander - 4 Short Poems & Some Haiku (1923-28)
—: Dream Song :— Walk with the sun, Dance at high noon; And dream when night falls black; But when the stars Vie with the moon . . .
Marjorie Muir - 2 Short Poems (1919)
—: Finis :— Gods upon your mountaintops— I hurl you back This beating, writhing, pain-filled Clod of flesh and blood. Did you put it in my keeping as a jest? Do you laugh now to see it dead? . . .
Sad to say that I’ve never heard of Kujō Takeko! How gorgeous her poetry is. She sounds like a powerhouse of a lady. The part describing the situation of not following routine and not looking after yourself “was it sad, I wonder, at my neglect” is just the tip of the layers of depression or perhaps despair. Thank you for the introduction. And the sequence of your tanka gave me a sense of belonging and hope in the tanka lines. I think as we enter winter you’re probably going into spring or summer so reading with the seasons in mind adds just another perspective. Lovely work!
dead starfish returned to the river—
let me be as lucky this time
(love this)