Face at the Bottom of the World and Other Poems. Hagiwara Sakutaro
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FACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
and Other Poems
BY HAGIWARA SAKUTARŌ
FACE AT THE BOTTOM
OF THE WORLD
and Other Poems
BY HAGIWARA SAKUTARŌ
translated by Graeme Wilson
paintings by York Wilson
CHARLES E. TUTTLE COMPANY
Rutland • Vermont : Tokyo • Japan
Representatives
For Continental Europe:
Boxerbooks, Inc., Zurich
For the British Isles:
Prentice-Hall International, Inc., London
For Australasia:
Paul Flesch & Co., Pty. Ltd., Melbourne
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M. G. Hurtig Ltd., Edmonton
UNESCO Collection of Representative Works: Japanese Series. This book has been accepted in the Japanese Series of the Translation Collection of the United. Nations educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.
of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan
with editorial offices at Osaki Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0032
© 1969 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 75-83075
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1267-4 (ebook)
First printing, 1969
Book design & typography by F. Sakade
PRINTED IN JAPAN
For
MAYUMI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AI REN
GREEN FLUTE
DUEL
IN THE BAR AT NIGHT
WOMAN
ROTTEN CLAM
TO DREAM OF A BUTTERFLY
PORTRAIT
WINTER
SPRING NIGHT
DAWN
BAMBOOS
PERSON WHO LOVES LOVE
HARMFUL ANIMALS
WHITE MOON
SAD MOONLIT NIGHT
SEASIDE HOTEL
FIELDMOUSE
DEATH OF AN ALCOHOLIC
WITH A GIFT
EGGS
ELEGANT APPETITE
ENCHANTEN GRAVEYARD
TURTLE
FACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
NEW ROAD AT KOIDE
BLUE FLAME
MOONLIGHT AND JELLYFISH
SWIMMER
SEA SHELL
CAFE OF THE DRUNKEN MOON
STILL LIFE
POLISHED METAL HANDS
DWARF LANDSCAPE
LATE AUTUMN
NIGHT TRAIN
DEATH OF A FROG
MURDER CASE
IN THE MOUNTAINS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments are made to the editors of the following publications in which various of these translations have appeared: the Japan Quarterly, the Oriental Economist, the P.E.N. Review of Japan, the East-West Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator, the Observer, the New Statesman & Nation, the Cornhill Magazine, Encounter, Tablet, English, Tribune, the Poetry Review, the Glasgow Herald, the Scotsman, New Nation, Chirimo, solidaridad, the Diliman Review, Enquiry, Poetry Singapore, the Bangkok Magazine, Poetry Australia, the Poetry Magazine, the Meanjin Quarterly, Twentieth Century, Poetry India, the Weekend Review, Now, Mainstream, Quest, Thought, Edge, Prism International, Delos, New and the Yale Review.
INTRODUCTION
The poetry of Hagiwara Sakutarō is still little known in the English-speaking world, though this is not altogether surprising when the importance of his work remains inadequately recognized in Japan itself. Nearly all Japanese critiques of post-Meiji poetry acknowledge Hagiwara as one of the best (if not, indeed, the very best) of modern Japanese poets; but almost all critics, having briefly made some such admission, thereafter shy away from him, strangely to devote long paragraphs to other poets patently less talented, sadly more diffuse and far less influential. Why? Perhaps the reason is that Hagiwara, for all his brilliance, seems somehow to switch on darkness, to radiate black luminance. In the beaconry of modern Japanese literature he is an occulting, rather than a flashing, light: but he remains nevertheless a lighthouse of supreme importance.
* * *
Hagiwara was born on November 1st 1886 at Maebashi, a provincial town near Tokyo where his father was a successful doctor, initially in government service and later in private practice. The family was typical of the new Japanese middle class deliberately created by the policy-makers of the Meiji regime, and his home environment was characterized by its openness to then-modern influences: electric light, the magic lantern, ping-pong, western chairs and tables, summer holidays at the seaside, western playing-cards, the piano, the guitar, the mouth-organ. The eldest of six children, he was a sickly and hence a spoilt child, remaining his mother's lifelong darling. An unsatisfactory student, his failure to achieve the academic distinction of which he was obviously capable reflected as much a lazy man's unwillingness as a sick man's inability to concentrate. He neither went to a University nor ever seriously studied to develop his natural talent for music. Indeed, modern critics conscious of his proven genius show an understandable reluctance to say flatly whether some of the curious