Kadokawa 'Tanka' March 2021 Issue
(1) Selected by Naoko Higashi: '30 Tanka Poems About Spring That Don't Include the Word "Spring"'Things that pass by and never return, a field of rapeseed, the flowers of the rapeseed, Michihiko MurakiFrom 'Tenshin' (The string of 'nanohana' in hiragana reminds one of the poem 'Landscape: Pure Silver Mosaic' by Hakucho Masamune. 'A field of rapeseed / a field of rapeseed'... right?)
Being a demon alone, waiting for a demon alone, deeply, a field of rapeseed, the flowers of the rapeseed, Yuko KawanoFrom 'Hirugao'. But what is surprising is that the lower seven-seven syllable phrase is exactly the same as this poem. Though the kanji and kana differ. 'Tenshin' (1974), 'Hirugao' (1976). Well, one cannot know which came first without checking the original publication.
As Higashi says, it might be the influence of Hakucho Masamune. Since Masamune's poem is from 1915, it might be true for both of them. What is even more surprising is that I didn't notice this poem at all when I read 'Tenshin'. It's as if I was reading, but my eyes were just moving. In reality, I wasn't reading it.
(2) '10 Years Since the Great East Japan Earthquake' by Michimasa Sato: <It is too peripheral to transmit to the world through this small poetic form. However, I have thought that by pursuing this peripheral nature that I happened to encounter, a path to the world might conversely open up.>
It sounds paradoxical, but it is the truth.
<When one finally reaches a certain universality after living through the concrete, does it not connect to world thought?> The Great East Japan Earthquake was something Sato, who thought this way, experienced. <All judgments of good and evil no longer hold; if so, the dead must forgive the living, and the living have no choice but to start over, including the share of those who have died.> <Anyone can be thrown out as a naked individual. What does one do then? One has no choice but to face the situation, betting on one's own survival power.> This text by Sato is amazing. I have been receiving Sato's messages ever since the earthquake occurred. I think it stands tall as a philosophy at this very moment. It shows a path connecting from the concrete to the universal, to world literature, and to world thought.
(3) '10 Years Since the Great East Japan Earthquake' by Saiko Kajiwara: <I experienced words failing to obey me when composing poems about the earthquake, and I gained a view of Tanka as something very physiological.> Elsewhere, Kajiwara says that the poems came out like automatic writing. Is it a feeling of having one's mind and body hijacked by words and fixed forms to produce poems?
I understand. I, too, have felt that fixed forms absorb sadness and suffering through words, and that the fixed form acts as a cushion between the event and my own heart. At such times, it feels like the poem is not being created, but rather emerging.
(4) '10 Years Since the Great East Japan Earthquake' by Yoshiko Takagi: <The more I compose about it in my work, the more the differences between self and others are brought to light and spread, hurting unexpected people and causing ruptures, or conversely, connecting and bonding people to an excessive degree.> Yukiko Mihara: <I could not have imagined ten years ago that schools would be forced to close due to a nuclear accident, and that we wouldn't even be able to say goodbye due to the COVID-19 pandemic.> Takagi's text, which looks broadly and deepens its consideration, and Mihara's text, which carefully writes down her own real experiences while positioning them as 'extremely personal'. Both lead to deep reflection. There were many other texts that deserved to be read carefully.
(5) Shota Uchiyama 'Tanka Review': Regarding Ritsuo Yamanaka's 'Editing of Kiyo Kawashima's Poetry': <In the original, while the outline of the poem is clear, the reader might reach the point of understanding its content in a short time and finish. As for the editing... the outline of the entire poem has a squishy, elusive quality, and for that reason, it contains elements that prompt the reader's thinking.> This text connects to what Uchiyama wrote in his essay on metaphor in the December issue of Kadokawa 'Tanka': <metaphor as a technique to make the reader stumble and stop.> Being difficult to understand exists as one technique (not a trend) of contemporary Tanka.
Both texts were very stimulating and cut deeply into what I am currently thinking about regarding composing and reading Tanka. I also thought the latter half of this review was a very appropriate point.
Edited and reposted from Twitter, March 28–31, 2021