POETRY OF YOSHIHARAby Yoshihara Sachiko Yoshihara Sachiko. Ed’s Note: Yoshihara Sachiko (1932-2000), a native of Tokyo, is another example of a notable Japanese born in the early 1930s. As in so many other cases, too little is known about her youthful experiences during war and occupation. In 1943, her family sent her, age eleven, to a Buddhist temple for protection from possible air raids but brought her back in 1945 after her father died, ironically just in time for the B-29 fire-bomb raids. Once again, she was evacuated, this time to the mountains, returning in 1946, to continue her high school education. Yoshiharu was one of the few young women to gain entry to Tokyo University under postwar education reforms, but it took her two tries to pass the entrance examination. Her prime interest at the university was in modern French and German theater. After graduation, she became a member of an acting troupe. Her marriage lasted only four years, 1958 to 1962, but produced a son. In the 1950s, she became associated with a well-known poetry group called Rekitei, which had been revived from the prewar period and was led by one of Japan’s major poets, Kusano Shimpei (1903-1988). This association is all the more interesting given his wartime connections with Japan’s puppet government in China. Yoshihara began publishing poetry in 1964 while continuing her involvement with the world of theater and dance. More collections of poems followed in the 1970s, including awards, and in 1979, her reputation secure, she was chosen for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Previously, she had traveled to Europe and Korea. In later years, 1983, she would co-found a woman’s literary journal, La Mer (The Sea), with fellow poet Shinkawa Kazue.
A generous selection of Yoshihara’s work appeared in English translation in a 1978 anthology. With one exception, all of the following are from her first works, Childhood Litany, and The Grave of Summer, both published in 1964; they are closest expressions we have of her postwar voice. “Resurrection” is from 1973. The images in her poetry are often dark and disturbing, and sometimes bizarre.
MADNESS Eyes shut tight I hear my brains go splat and scatter like dry tea-leaves. I must kill one lovely languid serpent after another A horse lies dangling upside down and a moon rising Mary with a child in her arms weeps with red eyes— now watch me whittle my finger away and paint red characters. One streak of white hair many streaks of white hair I am not to blame it’s the dreams that apear that are to blame A car crashes into another car slowly undersea. Whittling my finger sharpening it like a pencil let me write in red O Mary what words do you want me to Write down?
Darkness comes rushing on me with waves with fever a knife comes flying to me with a cat O burst the window! Pitiful O everything each and everyone so pitiful. FLOWERS In springtime when I was young the sun kept smiling its shining smile where cherry flowers were blooming at the full— lively husks of earth airy scales flaking away blown by a breeze the petals whirling settle and die one by one each one stained with translucent blood— and just like that white cotton threat stitching a would a line of flashes piercing and piecing together each rag of time that withers away perpetually— a pale-faed machine all on its own goes on stitching together pages of pensees. Sensation! Let me shed tears and play with garlands of flowers ah my perished hours— but among all these cherry flowers the evening is about to drown leaving a faint haze of shredded white cotton thread. KITCHEN TABLE There is something I mustn’t do though I don’t know why when I sit patiently in the half-dark of the room I fell a blue draught blowing through bringing angst there are nevertheless many tender-hearted things asparagus some stalks thick some thin a dish of crab salad with a tiny insect landed in it a mad woodcutter singing some song on the mountain Behind my house.
I know I am not alone any longer and yet I sometimes feel this heavy sadness —dusk I feel it sad and heavy upon me. APPETITE Starvation is the sin born within me. Why is there so little of it in this grey, stolid building? Starvation is the punishment I was given. Now it too must be punished for seeking seeking what there is so little of. All the same, unfortunately, I dislike overeating, and whatever I eat seems to poison me. Nevertheless, I am always ready to eat what I am and what I am not— autumn, love, a glittering airplane, and time that ebbs and flows outside the window-panes. NAME Yes, one day one day it shall be revealed that snow is not flowers, seas are not skies, wind does not sing donkeys are not horses and fathers are not out mothers’ lovers—
But I shall go on wrongly calling wind light, clouds roses, you my love, just as I have always done. Good things are all the same, and beautiful things cannot be mistaken. If one thing exists in all, and all things exist in one, we must call them all by the same name— RESURRECTION To kill love in order not to die nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;that is self-defense the pistol pointed at you is pointed at my heart the flame of crime and the ice of punishment make me crack open and should I break in two there will be a hole like a lie which will probably silently expand that is death the sound of earth dripping will recede and then to be in a cell for a long long time with its one window where there might perhaps be unquiet death burning death burning life in the brain a spider weaving a web wet with his own sweat reducing and annihilating the shining oblong of O. .........................
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