Ed’s Note: Shiraishi Kazuko is by far the best- known and most translated woman poet of her generation and should probably be referred to simply as a major 20th century Japanese poet without. Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1931, she was taken to Japan by her parents in 1938, soon after the outbreak of full-scale warfare between Japan and China. While in high school in Occupied Japan, she was influenced by the avant garde poetry group surrounding Kitasono Katue [his preferred spelling], a surrealist who had founded the poetry magazine, VOU, before the war and resumed publication in 1948. Her higher education, including a master’s degree, was at Waseda University, a prestigious private institution that would have been closed to her before the educational reforms of the Occupation. She majored in film and theater, one of Waseda’s great strengths. Her first volume of poetry, Town under a Rainfall of Eggs, dates from 1951 and is said to show the continuing influence of Kitasono. It is the earliest illustration of her early postwar creativity, but as yet there is no full English translation. By the time of her second collection, Tiger’s Play, 1960, she had developed, so the critics tell us, more of her own style; this was even more apparent with Come No Later in 1963. Shiraishi became increasingly famous, to some critics infamous, in 1960s Tokyo as a performance artist in the sense of reading her poems, sometimes in nightclubs, to the accompaniment of music, preferably to the rhythms of jazz. Her favorite was John Coltrane, avant garde jazz saxophonist, who died in 1967. As her fame increased, she was twice invited, 1973-74, to become a member of the University of Iowa International Writing Program, which brought her more recognition in the United States and awakened her as well to writing from the Third World. In the early 1980s, outfitted in leather, she was one of five Japanese poets who performed at the University of Maryland as guests of the Committee on East Asian Studies; English translations were read by Professor Eleanor Kerkham. She won three major literary prizes in 1996, including a medal from the Japanese emperor. Shiraishi continues to read her poems in Europe and the United States and was honored by the Donald Keene Center, Columbia University, in 2002, on the occasion of the of a new book of translations, Let Those Who Appear (New Directions), containing poems from 1984 to 2001. Her marriage to filmmaker Shinoda Masahir? ended in the mid-1960s.

MY TOKYO

I, like Buddha,
Almost sitting on this city
Am now pregnant with the ennui of October

My dearest girl friend, naked,
Walks up and down in an attic in New York;
Hysterically vivacious.

Wrapping an arm around Masuo's neck
You'll ask for kisses.
I want to touch, stripping it from its picture-frame,
That thin, coquettish, white nude body.
It will be very white, white as chalk,
A desolate sea yet solid.
It must, at touching, flake,
Letting small rolls of dirty plaster fall.
I see the thick pants of an Italian
Who, on his shoulders, totes you to the scullery in a washing-bag.
The empty cans of cheap beer which he bought
Lie in the first-floor bar.
They squeak like rats.
It is America. America the Hungry.

My dumb October,
Such sullenness of concrete
Hangs around My Tokyo.
Faked tears of false mankind, annoyingly,
Rustle about to no purpose. Lipsalves
Flood from the juke-box and then turn
To shoals of small sardines, give out bad smells
And find their way to be artistic and poetic thought.

O usual academic autumn!
Saying byebye to all of them,
I, after a long time,
Enter my inward canal:
I smuggle myself into my inner city.
At the entrance to that city, at the end of summer,
I met an individual,
Amen-hotep, Pharoah of ancient Egypt.
He was an unknown youth, nowadays a bus conductor,
A butcher, a driver of racing cars, a poet, a revolutionary, others such,
All the rain (which is not all), the antiquity of Egypt
Of five thousand years ago, a king, an eagle amulet,
Guts of the newborn crocodile for bait, soft brains
Of an infant, perfumed oil for the rituals, pliant dress
Of hatred, Time, which is a part of them and all of them.

I, hand in hand with a moment of Amen-hotep,
In and out of such chaos
Dashed into a season of personal performance.
At that time
There came the noise of a subway train
Rushing through the bottom of my city womb,
And, on the stage, drums and the bass were sounding.
Sandra began to dance.
Sandra Dressed-all-in-black is not Salome
But a beautiful Lesbian negress, middle class,
A sweet most dissolute mistress, a go-go dancer,
A black St. Mary who turned her husband
Into a pale shark, a eunuched Don Juan.

That I started taking the subway
Led to my first meeting with Henry Miller.
In the chamber pot, in newspapers, old letters, chairs, in milk,
In all the furniture or food
I saw his water waiting to be drunk, cell-bodies
And his rag-like life.

I remain a constant subway-rider.
For hours, almost as long as intercourse,
I have loved the subway. My subway is
No longer made of iron. It's a shape of softest flesh,
A phantom of civilization, a cradle of thought
In that inward city. That subway is
The innermost gut of meditation.
Men who settled in the city
Clung to its ulcer between sleep and waking,
Men incessantly frothing at the mouth;
Not words, not angry roars, not pleadings and not smiles,
Not even courtship, not contentment, not contentiousness:
Nothing but foam.

At the club "so what" at one o'clock in the morning
Max Roach beating a drum.
Why is he so handsome?
Why does his drum appeal so lyrically?
A rain of strong crushing sounds
Are the crown of his technique!
The people there were numbed. They were enchanted.
A microcosm of his music knocked down flat
The idle egg-laying of the people.

My Tokyo,
This city is almost
Our womb.
I, standing at the entrance,
Kissed my Amen-hotep.
Then rain began to fall and we,
For almost all the time of our solidarity, died or united…
To be dead for five thousand years and to be born for five thousand years,
To yawn for five thousand years and to keep laughing for five thousand years:
It will be more than love.
Everything, frogs, eggs, jam, a piece of blue sky,
Carbon paper, records as well as flies. . . .
Let's dive to the sheets!:
It is the password of our city.
With a dead cat someone in deep solitude so dived.
Someone, too, handsome as he was,
Broke the mirror into pieces, clasped
With all his strength his penis over it and fainted.
Somebody again, being constantly afraid of his delicate
Brain and body, taking the powder of the summer plum,
Crouched on the bed-sheets crying bitterly.
These men, like two young leopards,
Embrace each other quietly in the deep woods of their yearning.
Those beautiful monkey-women in each other's secret rooms
Balance a rainbow of caresses like the glow of morning.

About that time
My personal performance lasted
Quickly and displeasingly, from October to December.
At that time I was caught in the spider-web
Of mere forgetfulness, acute delights, meditative madnesses and so forth.
Much of my self fell victim to that spider:
Captured with slovenly cries
One of my selves escaped,
Took the subway and still
Tried to make some sort of music.

This may not be love,
Merely the greetings of the season;
However,
Something was at least committed to music
And I myself, already daubed in the new melody,
Hear my tail lash with the fury of the crocodile of hatred.
But who is being slapped?
Who is this ghost that is summoned into music?

O!
I see Joe in the guise of a ghost at the terminal.
He, already crushed beneath the sexual roller,
Has turned into a grey shadow.
Is he magnetic sand driven into the spermless desert,
Forsaken even by the last drop of his life's storage?
He, caught in the coils of a viper,
Is gradually carried by the spider
Away from the limb of his will.
Already rusted fast into the side of delayed time,
He's going to lower the last curtain.
And I am also
Poking the hot will in the ashes
That I may bury My City completely.
Vaguely I heard God's pain.
After struggling through the fog of premonition
It suddenly changed into a shooting pain.
Now for the first time
I see entire God fall into a thunderbolt, roaring,
To become hot at my side.
It is both momentary and aeon's long:
To lie half-suffering half-injured
In the guise of a feeble traveler.

My city is now
Far off in the distance.
Turning close to the stranger's visage,
It sleeps an aimless sleep
With its neck of concrete drooped.

PHALLUS
— for Sumiko's birthday

God exists, though he doesn't exist
And, humorous as he is,
He resembles a certain kind of man.


This time,
Bringing a gigantic phallus,
He joined the picnic
Above the horizon of my dream.

By the way
I regret
I didn't give Sumiko something for her birthday:
But at least I would now wish
To implant the seeds of that God-brought phallus
In the thin, small, charming voice of Sumiko
At the other end of the telephone.

Forgive me, Sumiko,
But the phallus shooting up day by day
Now grows in the heart of the cosmos
And, like a damaged bus, cannot be moved.
Therefore
If you want to see
The beautiful sky with its bright star-spangle
Or some man other than this God-brought phallus,
A man who dashes out in a car
Along the highway with a hot girl,
Then you must really
Hang out of the bus window
And peep about.

When the phallus
Begins to move and comes to the side of the cosmos
It commands a most splendid view. In such a time,
Dear Sumiko,
The loneliness of the way in which the starred night shines
And the curious coldness of midnoon
Thrill me to the marrow.
What is seen is seen whole-heartedly. No man
But goes mad.
Because a phallus has neither name note personality
And is timeless,
It sometimes leaves its traces
On the tumbled air
When someone passes by
Carrying it uproariously like a portable shrine.
In that hum of voices
One hears the expansion of savage
Disturbance, the imprecations
Of semen not yet ruled by God. Sometimes
God is apt to be absent:
He seems to go somewhere else
Leaving debts or a phallus behind him.

Now
The phallus abandoned by God
Comes this way.
Being young and gay
And full of clumsy confidence
It, surprisingly, resembles the shadow
Of an experienced smile.

The phallus seems to grow beyond all numeration,
And, beyond counting, comes this way.
It is in fact in the singular. It comes alone.
Seen from whatever horizon,
It has nor face nor words.
I would like to give you, Sumiko,
Such a thing for your birthday.

When therewith your whole life is enswaddled,
You will become invisible to yourself.
Occasionally you will turn into the will of the very phallus
And wander endlessly.
I would wish to catch in my arms,
Endlessly,
One such as you.

THE LION'S HUMMING

I was a lion yesterday humming in the jungle...At night
the stars fell simultaneously
and trampling moonlight
I was burned everywhere
the tip of my nose abraded
my life scorched dangerously by love
and my mane blew somewhere in the wind
to the past...to the future...to death
It flew to eternity
Now my ears and tail
will not come back to me again

Today...coming home from school
I passed a mirror shop
and I could only remember this:
since I forgot my tweezers in the jungle
I can't pick out
a single phrase I was humming

NON-STOP

The man who started running
cannot stop
Neck thrust out from a building window
just so! He gallops down the wall
runs down the highway...and when the sea cuts the highway
he runs on the sea
I alone tend the man who can't sleep
who continues running
over notebooks...through drawers
inside my darkness

The man who continues running
forgets to let me sleep
so my days are exhausted
and my nights...stretched out...will not return

MY AMERICA

I had a phone call
My darling, I want to see you
America is a darling
There's no need to think
Damn hypocrite Jonathan!
I have no interest in politicians
It's a darling I'm interested in
Dearest America
My love

What's your name?
O America
No, you are nothing but you
Your sweat shining in anonymity
Shining love
The barbecue you cook
At the bottom of a love-overflowing bottle
That irresistibly tasty mire
It was far better in bed
I like the inside of your thigh
Gods are overwhelmed
By your reticent, tough and elegant penis
Prayers should be chanted
At a time like this

A kiss good night
After watching the late-night show on TV
Before creeping into bed
I take out a kiss or a canned beer from the freezer
It is always at such a time that I'm puzzled
Which to come first
In the morning
You get up
Your breakfast has a taste
Of the sun, canned goods
Restriction and frozen freedom
You are generous with those flavors

You get angry
Only when you lose money on the races
Everytime you do the shopping
At the supermarket
They give you a pool-ticket
And you pool them...On Saturday night
All in front of TV
Wanting to be an American millionaire
Showing your teeth
Wear the face of
Individualism, egoism
Money-adorationism and optimism
The washing is often snatched
I can't hang it out to dry outside
Though it is not
A slum here
Shut up!
The "Noseopen" is now galloping
The third, the third...ah . . .

I took a trip
To North Dakota...a small country
Smaller than Harajuku
A henhouse-like airport
The smell of oil from the propeller plane
Soaked through the flight lunch sandwiches
We went down the ladder...and then
All at once
People looked at me
Me
And my man

Dark soft hat, dark sunglasses
Dark coat, dark face, and dark hands
But it's not a shadow
Living warm blood-smelt...my
Dark man
Has been waiting for a long time
For about eternity
Becoming a black point
Here among white faces

Snowflakes are dancing in the sky
Drier than sand. . . .
Noko keeps laughing till she cries
Gil embraces for all his life
A she-hare that doesn't stop laughing
With the spell of kisses...Such a record
I keep listening three whole days

The night train to Chicago
Let's take Train A
Blues that Lou Rawls sings
"Goin' to Chicago Blues"
We were blues too then
Of tomorrow
Ah if we think of tomorrow
"We gotta drink muddy water"
Ah Lou Rawls is always happy
When he sings
In a hustler suit on the street
But why does he say
"Stormy Monday"?

We arrived
On Friday
On Friday when an eagle was flying
At the womb-station
Huge, dirty and old
In the underground where Ma was waiting
How many times do you say
We should jump into bed and love?
My darling America
Nobody now says
A gentle American
Silently they know
He is an ex-star in Hollywood
Rich, young and handsome
Now slightly losing his charms
Suffering from three kinds of cancer
But such a word as gentle
Is nowadays used only for hippies

Homosexual love
Give me your panties
With chastity and a handsome youth in it
Send it by express
To that George's shop on Buggery Street No. 10
Roses easily perish as well as art
And soon become refined in taste
Like those cheese-pies

Madame Blanche sleeps well
For education art galleries and museums
Because children enjoy themselves

Don't cry
You must grow big and strong
Dancing, holding
Eating, quarreling
Making love, traveling
Boxing, walking
Sleeping they cried
As the two
Had just opened the lid of love
They didn't know how to drink
It's a long way to the damn honey taste
How many tens of years more
O America, my darling
Before you become a cook of honey in Hell
I don't know you
Is your name America, you who are here?
No
You are a bright anonymity
My private America
Not canned but fresh in taste and smell
Soul food
Crossing trifling time together
Soul time, darling
Be careful with snakes...and then
A kiss good night

Kijima, Hajime (ed.). The Poetry of Postwar Japan. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1975; 184-198.

TOWN UNDER A RAINFALL OF EGGS

While taking a rest in a pool of green lettuces,
we are showered with a rain of eggs—
cheap eggs, dear eggs, hard eggs, soft eggs.
We are showered with babies, boys,
rats, heroes, monkeys, grasshoppers too, falling
on church roofs, on playgrounds.
We hold out our hands in longing, but
they all, like sorrow, trickle away through our fingers,
with a funny top hat
dramatizing the height of a tall building.
The eggs fall through the chill veins of vegetables too.
What for?
(I don't know, don't know, don't know.)

This is the editorial in our town's local newspaper.

BIRD

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
It is not hundred of birds nor thousands of birds
But always one bird only that takes wing from with me
Bearing my ugly guts.
Bird,
Every time I conceive you within me
I am made blind, and live a blind existence
Sniffing my way around the world.
I see you only when I have lost you.
But then I see my old self die and
A new blind self begin to bud.
On stage. He, changing himself into quite a bird, sings:
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
Attended by the tens of thousands of ears in his audience,
Then the audience becomes millions of blind wings
The blind audience has turned into so many ghosts of
Fluttering birds, dancing among the dark seats,
Following the crying of the one bird on stage.
So can anyone tell which is the real bird among
All those ghost birds?...And
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
What can it be, really, taking wing from here?
The singer himself cannot tell, who is just singing
In ecstasy, felling, now that something is flying away,
The softest loin of his soul, or may be the memory of the
Star of guilty conscience, or may be the warm splash of
Blood out of the tulip-shaped brain of the child seated
Right in the front row.

BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
I am a bird.
Whether I refuse to be myself
Or accept,
Just as long as I am not yet deprived of this
Ever-pecking pointed beak and
A pair of naturally fluttering wings,
I am a bird today,
Making myself into a prayer, piercing the sky
Several times a day, only to be thrust down upon the ground,
Or I am the guts the falling bird is bearing.
Here within myself I have gathered all these fallen birds – huge,
Small, thin and dwarfish, arrogant, gentle: some are still half
...alive, moaning.
Every day I perform the bird funeral for them, in which other birds,
Strip their flesh to the bones,
While
Every day I warm their eggs so as to hatch out the little ones.
Such eggs I warm all the more lovingly and desperately when I
...know
They will grow into grotesque birds that one day will destroy
...Our future.
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
I am planning to make that fellow fly away some day, the one
I know will come back and destroy me; yes,
I must expel him so violently that he is bleeding all over,
And then I can really sing for him with all my heart:
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD

Kirkup, James (transl) and Davis, A.R. (ed). Modern Japanese Poetry. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1978, pp. 228-230.

STREET

It was when we walked on wet to our skins,
On a dark street in a miserable town.
Rain. Chilly weather.
We had raincoats and a black umbrella.
No matter how hard we waved to catch a cab,
They never stopped.
Finally we started to walk,
Wetly, tightly together,
And we wondered what future lay ahead of us.

Although I've never remembered anything
Of a warm hotel, of our bodies sharing their warmness,
Of our many words and acts of love.

MY AMERICA

You've got me on the line
But baby I want to see you
America means my baby
Thinking won't help
It isn't politics on my mind
It's my baby
My darling darling America

So you're called America?
No, you're as nameless as your shining sweat
And you've got that barbecue bubbling up
With love
Delicious goo
So good in bed
I like the inside of your thigh
Your tough elegant penis
That doesn't let anything on
Wipes out the gods
O let me say my prayers
At a time like this

A kiss goodnight
After the late late show
Before bed
I get out either a kiss or a canned beer
I can't tell which comes first
In the morning you get up
To breakfast tasting
Like sun, shelf life, constraint,
And frigid freedoms—
Flavors that you spread around

You are pissed
Only when you blow it on the horses
Each trip to the market means
You draw another pool ticket
On Saturday night glued to TV
Dying to make an American million
Your bare teeth shining
Individualism
Egoism
Money lust
Optimism
All show in your face