POETRY OF KORA
by Kora Rumiko
Ed’s Note. Kora Rumiko is not as well known overseas as other Japanese writers, but is a prizewinning feminist poet and essayist of considerable renown in Japan. Born in Tokyo, 1932, she grew up during the Great Depression and Asia/Pacific War years, reaching high school and college age during the Occupation. She subsequently graduated from Keio, a prestigious private university. Her mother, left wing politician and activist K?ra Tomi, held a doctorate in psychology from prewar Columbia University and won a seat in the first election to the postwar Diet in 1947. Daughter Rumiko’s first poetry collection, Basho (The Place), was published in 1962 and won an important award the following year. In later years, K?ra also began writing novels.
This first set was selected for inclusion in a 1975 anthology by a Japanese poet and scholar who had spent a year, 1972-73, in the University of Iowa International Writing Program. He did not, however, date the poems and provided only brief biographies. We know from another source that “The Tree” was published in 1970, and “Awakening” in 1971. K?ra herself is credited with the English translations.
THE TREE
Within a tree there is a tree which does not yet exist.
Now its twigs tremble in the wind.
Within a blue sky there is a blue sky which does not yet exist.
Now a bird cuts across its horizon.
Within a body there is a body which does not yet exist.
Now its sanctuary accumulates fresh blood.
Within a city there is a city which does not yet exist.
Now its plazas sway before me.
AWAKENING
After objects jostled past me,
trees turned their leaves
and shut me off from the world.
Out of this emptiness,
I touch the hot texture of a cheek;
a naked arm; dark rocks lying everywhere under the earth.
(I escaped the void
and went along the easy curves of leaves in darkness
towards the border
because you were there;
because you were not there.)
In an atmosphere of heated matter,
I search under my eyelids for a speed
faster than dust falls at dawn.
When clear morning light
opens my eyes from inside,
a crisis also awakens.
My hands mix the unknown breath of objects
with the earth's morning they can't see.
AUTUMN
It is now autumn in the universe.
A young girl who attempted suicide
recovers, knowing she can leave her family.
A man from across the sea
talks about your isolation more clearly than you.
The lower leaves of a magnolia turn yellow
where sunlight slips through.
Eternity suddenly appears
in the lights of an oncoming bus.
One autumn day like this
the world rapidly shrinks,
and people living on distant deserts
become familiar.
Unexpectedly, you feel transparency invading your body through your tail,
and you quickly rise from your chair.
Your short rest is finished.
You are already in a new activity.
SHE
The azalea's white petals open
like the earth's dizziness.
A woman becomes invisible
in their combining odors.
Petals are scattered at her feet
with objects that were illusions.
They change into an ocean of dark vomit
and buoy her up.
Drifting on endless waves,
little by little she forgets
her home,
flower-words,
the ocean,
her wandering.
…between the petals of the sheets,
she awakens without a life history, without shame,
by the side of a man coming back to her.
THE FRIEND
I felt light in my eyes.
The afternoon sun shattered in the hair of a girl running towards me.
A policeman wearing earphones smiled on a chair in front of his police box.
My friend, who once shared our aspirations,
worked in a deep green shadow in his studio;
telephone and ink bottle on his left, ashtray and pen rack on his right.
Green light coming through the tree
filled the air in the dry room.
Shall I continue or quit . . . ?
I was saying something
about the man I was living with.
What became of our aspirations?
Are they dead as pebbles?
The telephone rang like an alarm.
Unfinished letters for a poster
lay on his desk.
I looked at the needles of my watch.
"Continue!" he said.
His wife, born in the year of the ram,
poured coffee in blue cups.
His solid body
existed in this small pre-fab room.
"Continue…"
Once more the telephone rang.
I went to the door and saw the garden
where an old tree spread its heavy leaves.
I could sense an old person in the main house
whom I had heard died there.
The last dozen years flashed before me
between a face from the past
and this little-changed garden.
If I quit
would our aspirations live?
The reddening ginko trees
stand in rows, gathering dewy evening light.
Among these trees glowing like flame
the light became increasingly brilliant.
As I walked the heated pavement
snapping like popcorn,
suddenly, the light fragmented.
.........................
Reference
Kijima, Hajime (ed.). The Poetry of Postwar Japan. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1975.
**********
We turn to a second group of selected K?ra poems, this time for inclusion in a 1978 anthology published in Australia. The editor picked two of the same poems, “A Tree” and “Awakening,” but gave slightly different titles and variant translations. Since he also provided dates and sources for the selected poems, we have a better idea of the development of K?ra’ s artistry and concerns. The first three examples come from her initial publication, Place, 1962. Poems four and five, as indicated, were published respectively in 1970 and 1971.
JEWELLERY COUNTER
Life effervesces but we cannot penetrate the gems
this is a place where a tongue not ours predominates
and certain human shadows thinner than paper
superimpose themselves on one another there.
Young girls approach here like copper coins incising light
and letting fall their shadows on the plate glass
extend their weightless arms across the jewels
which hold themselves aloof creating whorls of air around them.
When under the supple light cast here
the stones present their faces to the girls
what evil in them can it be that always burns with brilliant grace?
and what can be the nothingness irradiating chasmed silences
Within their hearts?
Falling languidly upon themselves they lie
self-contained as noh masks upon the brows of former faces
where the past goes on eating time incessantly away
not leaving any would unhealed upon the surface of the earth.
When within their glittering confines
inevitable tomorrow seizes the whole of me
they no longer will preserve that brilliance that illusion
and like a veil of white petals will be whirled away across the
Cracked horizon.
ENCOUNTER
I miss my footing on the stairs,
and find myself in front of a door
which I open and see you there.
(I don't need you, so
I'd just as soon you vanished.)
Turned into a sharp knife, I
run through the town.
The air, like a balloon, comes
billowing towards me.
Wriggling among the staring eyes, I
stab the folds of air and the
invisible walls of words.
Tomorrow,
another person who is myself and not myself
will exchange friendly greetings with you,
who will have missed your footing on the stairs and
broken open the door.
CONTEMPLATION
I hear a hundred voices mutter and complain
behind my back
I hear a thousand voices mutter and complain
away ahead of me
I don't know how to still the thousand voices any more than
the hundred voices –
I dissipate the voices in my own way
I select products painted with plastic that is their sweat
and sell them these under an agreement with the military
(their motors function without thinking)
Without me people might get along better
but my own way works as well as their's
without me people might get along better
but after all here am I
and so what matters is what I think –
without me
nothing would get done in the end
without me
there would be no progress and no happiness.
A TREE (1970)
In a tree, there is
a tree still not in existence,
whose crest is even now
trembling in some breeze.
In a blue sky, there is
a blue sky still not in existence,
whose horizon is now being
pierced by a swift bird.
In a body, there is
a body still not in existence,
whose altar is now being
flooded with fresh blood.
In a town, there is
a town still not in existence,
whose main square is now being
swung in my direction.
AWAKE (1971)
After things have been crowding against one another
and passing across me
and trees silently turn the backs of their leaves
and take the world away from me.
Out of this void I extend a hand
and touch the cheek of wood’s hot grain
a naked arm and
beneath the earth circling round and round
the dark rocks.
(I escaped from futility
I followed the curves of the leaves of darkness
towards the boundary beyond
because you were there
because you were not there.)
In the furnace fired by matter of various kinds
the eyes under their closed lids
seek speeds faster than the speed of dust falling at dawn.
Translucent morning light
has opened my eyelids from within
and a crisis has just awakened.
My hand mixes the unknown breath of things
with the unseen mornings of the earth.
.........................
Reference
Kirkkup, James (trans.) and Davis, A.R. (ed.). Modern Japanese Poetry. Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1978; 247-251.
*************
Fortunately we have additional examples of K?ra’s poetry in English translation. They appear as an appendix to an interview of K?ra by Sandra Buckley for a 1997 publication, Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism (Berkeley: University of California). We learn a great deal from this valuable interview about K?ra’s passion for poetry, her questioning of the category of women’s poetry, and her own brand of pacifism and feminism (the interview appears separately under the theme, “Literature.”). Unfortunately, the questioning did not extend to her youth and education during the war and Occupation, her relationship with her activist mother, and her initial development as a poet. The translations below are by Buckley with the permission of K?ra. Though a historian, Buckley does not date the original poems. It would be interesting to determine, for example, when K?ra wrote such poems as “In our Country” and “When the War Ended.” Was it in the early aftermath of war and defeat, or in later years upon reflection? Also, we have a third version of “Tree,” which we know dates from 1970.
IN OUR COUNTRY.
In our country they waved as they sent off the last of the fighter pilots
then sank the mothership that should have made the return voyage.
In our country they waved the flag at the children as they sent them to the villages
then burnt the cities together with the mothers and fathers.
In our country they exchanged firm handshakes with the youths
then loaded them onto special weapons of death
In our country they sent the young boys and girls to work in the factories
then slowly made them over into machines
In our country they had then lay down their arms
then shot them in the back
In our country they ask, a smile on their face, to shake our hand
then slip a gun in it.
TREE
Within a tree
another tree that is not yet,
and now the upper branches shift in the wind.
Within the blue sky
another blue sky that is not yet,
and now the horizon is rent by a bird in flight.
Within a body
another body that is not yet,
and now the shrine gathers blood.
Within a road
another road that is not yet,
and now that space is shaken by my destination.
LIKE THE MOTHER IN THE SEA
If only my heart were
vaster
deeper
like the sea,
like the mother in the sea,
then, perhaps, it could carry some part of
the grief of a grieving child.
The grief of a grieving child
should not be in this world.
I want to take that child in my
arms in a deep embrace.
If only my heart were
richer
softer
like the sea,
like the mother in the sea
then, perhaps, it could melt away the frozen tear streak
of a wounded child.
The frozen tear streak
of a wounded child
should not be in this world.
I want to save that child
and melt away the tears.
If only my heart were
harsher
raging
like the sea
like the mother in the sea
then, perhaps, it could rage together
with the anger of a grieving child.
The cold anger
of a grieving child
should not be in this world
I want to let it rage
endlessly.
Is there a mother in the sea?
Is there a sea in the mother?
If only my heart were
vaster
deeper.
ELEGY TO A POLITICIAN
He stands,
a dim shadow cast across his back
that shadow shrouds our country
His head has two faces,
he has a thousand hands
and ten thousand legs
With some of these hands he binds a friendship,
with his other hands he nurtures the friend’s enemy
With some of these hands he supports his colleagues,
with his other hands he pushes them over the edge into Hell
With some of these hands he creates order,
with his other hands he evades the law
He rules from the shadows,
and in those shadows countless people die
The shadows move on with the passage of history,
while he keeps his dirty hands hidden in his pockets
He disappears into the sunset,
and from behind the looks just like all of us.
WHEN THE WAR ENDED
When the war ended
the mean came home.
At last, the cry of babies
was heard abundant throughout our cities and villages,
the stream of life of the young children
promised to fill the dreadful void left by the dead.
But in this country there are some women who will never mother children,
the women who lost the men they were to marry,
the women who lost the men who were to be their lovers
before they even knew their names.
And in this country there are some men who will never father children,
the men who lie not beside the warm flesh of their wife
but in the cold earth of a foreign land.
Those who ordered them to die
father children, carry on the bloodline,
surrounded by the warmth of family, they smile.
But the dead look on
in the spaces between the highrises.
They reflect on the meaning of their death.
Why did we kill and why did we die?
A wind blows down from the heights of futility
an infinite anger.
WAR DEAD
They say the nation will celebrate the war dead,
they say the nation will pray for the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine.
What would they have us celebrate?
There are no war dead there,
only empty wooden coffins, parched,
cry out,
blown by winter winds.
It is to their birthplace,
the mountain peaks and river banks,
The family hearth, familiar lanes,
street corners, close to those who remember them,
that the war dead return.
This nation supplied no ships or fuel for their return.
This nation abandoned them to the mud and blood
on the far shores of the South Seas.
.........................
Reference
Buckley, Sandra (ed.). Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; 121-129.
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