Japanese Prose Poetry (review)
Leith Morton
The Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 34, Number 1, Winter 2008, pp.
208-212 (Review)
Published by Society for Japanese Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2008.0021
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231204
[ Access provided at 5 Oct 2020 04:51 GMT from Auckland University of Technology ]
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by the modern ideology of love), clearly articulates her wish to share her
husband’s thoughts and anguish, and she expects a reciprocity in their relationship that Sensei is never willing to give. Shizu is not Nogi’s Shizuko,
with the unquestioning loyalty of a samurai’s wife, and that was perhaps one
of the problems Sensei had difficulty dealing with, a problem he discovered
only after marrying her. In reading “the Nogi palimpsest underlying Kokoro” (p. 185), it is just as important to pay attention to the gaps and differences between it and Kokoro as it is to the parallels between them.
Bargen finishes the book by presenting examples of the variants of
junshi from other places and times: the suicides of Marcus Porcius Cato
Uticensis, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Lucius Annacus Seneca from antiquity; many civilians and military men of 1945; and Mishima Yukio from
postwar Japan. And this brief coda is perhaps meant to resonate with her earlier “anthropological speculations about East-West form and dissimilarities” (p. 8) in chapter 1. While we should give credit to Bargen’s attempt to
combine various perspectives in shedding light on this little-understood
(and often misunderstood) practice of junshi, I believe the historical and literary perspectives in the Japanese context are the most fruitful and valuable.
By bringing into focus the historically specific circumstances surrounding
Nogi’s life, and bringing together the selected texts of Ōgai and Sōseki, the
book gives us invaluable insight not only into Nogi’s junshi but also into
Ōgai and Sōseki’s moral dilemma and anguish and into the challenges that
the changing values of the bakumatsu and Meiji periods must have posed for
the Japanese people in general.
Japanese Prose Poetry. By Yasuko Claremont. Wild Peony Pty. Ltd., Broadway, New South Wales, 2006; distributed by University of Hawai‘i
Press. 164 pages. $25.00, paper.
Reviewed by
LEITH MORTON
Tokyo Institute of Technology
To my knowledge, the book under review is the only book to have been written in English on Japanese prose poetry since Dennis Keene’s pioneering work—The Modern Japanese Prose Poem—was published in 1980.
Keene’s book quickly went out of print and Princeton University Press has
never republished it, so Yasuko Claremont’s volume is a welcome addition
to the tiny library of books in English on Japanese verse—here meaning
vers libre, not traditional genres of poetry such as tanka, haiku, and senryū.
This is not to say that other English-language books such as Hosea Hirata’s
The Poetry and Poetics of Nishiwaki Junzaburō (Princeton University Press,
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1993), or John Solt’s Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning on Kitasono
Katsue (Harvard University Press, 1999), Miryam Sas’s Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism (Stanford University Press, 1999)
dealing mainly with poetry of Takiguchi Shūzō (but examining other poets
as well), or my own Modernism in Practice: An Introduction to Postwar
Japanese Poetry (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004) have not treated prose
poetry, as such writing was an important part of the oeuvres of the several
poets examined in these works. And these are not the only books in English
to touch upon Japanese prose poetry, but none of the books mentioned above
attempts the kind of detailed and specialized analysis that Claremont and
Keene undertake in their respective volumes.
Claremont divides her book into four general chapters that examine a
host of poets (20 by my count) and three other chapters that each focus on a
single poet. This creates both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage
of chapters that treat themes such as the aftermath of World War II, that is,
the legacy bequeathed to postwar poets (chapter 3), and also the isolation of
the self (chapter 4), by referring to a mass of poets and prose poems is that
readers have the opportunity to encounter a large number of poems by a
diverse group of poets. The disadvantage is that sometimes the treatment of
an individual poet or poem is no more than a page or so—and most of the
page is taken up by a translation of a poem. I would have preferred that
Claremont had undertaken detailed studies of a small group of poets, say
seven or eight writers, rather than divide the book in this way, as a passing
glance at a multiplicity of writers does not add a great deal to the main thrust
of her analysis.
Another consequence of dividing the book is that the three detailed chapters on Irisawa Yasuo (b. 1931), Takayanagi Makoto (b. 1950), and Hiraide
Takashi (b. 1950) are more studies of individual poets than a detailed consideration of prose poetry per se and do not link directly with the four general chapters discussing broader themes. The chapter on seven contemporary women poets (chapter 8) seems especially isolated because it is not
clearly integrated into the broader thematic discussion conducted in the
other general chapters.
I assume Claremont chose the structure she did because this is only the
second book on the subject in English (and I know of no other books on the
subject in any other European language) and also because she wanted to differentiate her volume from that of Keene who has detailed studies of six
modern prose poets (Miyoshi Tatsuji, Anzai Fuyue, Tamura Ryūichi, Yoshioka Minoru, and Tanikawa Shuntarō), half of whom are also treated
in Claremont’s book but in nowhere near the same detail as in Keene’s.
Claremont’s book thus discusses approximately four times as many poets as
Keene’s, but only the three contemporary poets mentioned above receive the
same kind of intensive analysis that Keene devotes to his choices.
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Claremont’s analysis of poems and themes is, at times, illuminating and
is always informative. Her discussion of Hagiwara Sakutarō and Nishiwaki
Junzaburō (chapter 2) is clear and incisive, not a surprise since Claremont
has published previously on these poets. But by far the best chapters are
those on Irisawa Yasuo, Takayanagi Makoto, and Hiraide Takashi. The
chapter on Irisawa deals extensively with his masterpiece Waga Izumo waga
chinkon (My Izumo, my requiem, 1968) as well as other poems. Claremont
reads this long epic, parodic poem as essentially a quest by the narrator for
his lost soul. At the same time, she notes that it is an epic journey-poem traversing vast tracts of Japanese myth, history, and legend. It is also a supremely playful poem. If I have a criticism of Claremont’s interpretation, it
is that more attention should be paid to the notes (according to Claremont,
some 147 in total but I count a few more), which constitute the “My Requiem” half of the poem. However, this is a minor quibble as the poem, one
of the masterpieces of postwar verse, can accommodate several contradictory readings. Claremont’s chapter on Irisawa is the longest in the book
and, in view of the stature of this poet, this is not unexpected.
Takayanagi is a poet who is far less well known than Irisawa or Hiraide
but Claremont makes a strong case for his importance. As Claremont’s
English translations are the first ever made of this poet, this chapter takes
on extra significance. Her translations read well and I have no doubt are a
good guide to the originals. Takayanagi’s prose poems appear to me to resemble some of the work by contemporary English and American poets—
“language” poets such as Ron Silliman and the famous Cambridge poet
J. H. Prynne. But readers will find their own connections to this poet who
will surely come under further scholarly scrutiny in the years to come.
Claremont has published previously on Hiraide Takashi and has met
with the poet on more than one occasion. Thus the readings she proposes of
the three books discussed in chapter 7 carry some weight. It is unfortunate,
in my view, that the interpretation advanced by Claremont of Hiraide’s important collection Ie no ryokusenkō (Green flash in the house, 1987) fails to
focus on the main structural device employed by the poet. Claremont notes
that “Hiraide takes up the same topic repeatedly, each time with a different
perspective” (p. 119) but more or less leaves her observation at that point.
For me, Hiraide’s technique of confusing/fracturing/playing with the same
subject matter (and sometimes the same words) creates two sets of poems
on the same subject: a parallel universe of poems, a shadow (as in a photographic negative) and a positive double-layered structure that is witty but
also serious in its dislocation (or defamiliarization) of language. Further,
the double structure is repeated in the central motif of the “Green Ray,” a
phenomenon both fictional and scientific. The disagreement provoked by
Claremont’s careful analysis of this important poet—simultaneously
vilified and lauded by Yoshimoto Takaaki in Sengoshi shiron (A historical
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study of postwar poetry, 1981), his landmark history of postwar verse (republished in 1986)—is testimony to the depth of her scholarly examination.
One general critique that can be made of the book is from the very examples cited by Claremont—Irisawa’s Waga Izumo, for example. At times
it is impossible to draw a definite dividing line between prose poetry and
“regular” poetry, for want of a better word. My view is that postwar poetry
embraces a spectrum in which prose poetry may appear at one pole and poetry written with a heavy metrical structure may appear at the opposite pole.
Much modern poetry (Japanese or otherwise) falls somewhere in between.
In addition, while Claremont sees prose poetry as essentially inspired by
Western verse, and so an intellectual rather than musical construct, there
exist antecedents within the Japanese verse tradition. Some nineteenthcentury shintaishi (new-style poems), while following a five/seven syllabic
count, are indeed intellectual constructs arguing a philosophic, theological,
or scientific case, and some of these poems are exceedingly long. The poems in praise of evolution composed by Inoue Tetsujirō (1855 –1944),
Yatabe Ryōkichi (1851–99), and Toyama Masakazu (1848 –1900) in the
Shintaishishō collection (Selection of new-style poems, 1882) are certainly
inspired by Western science but not exactly Western verse, and they have no
connection to Charles Baudelaire or Stéphane Mallarmé, who Claremont
sees as fundamental models for the prose poetry genre in Japan.
Another possible antecedent to prose poetry is the bibun (elegant writing) genre of prose, which achieved great popularity in the mid-Meiji period
and was championed by the Myōjō-ha group of poets. This genre of writing
achieved significant aesthetic success in the hands of accomplished poets
such as Yosano Akiko and her husband Hiroshi, both of whom exercised
powerful influence over later generations of poets, whether writing traditional verse or vers libre. Yosano Hiroshi’s long shi (poems) were written in
a mixture of traditional and modern styles and could have played some role
in preparing the ground for prose poetry. Contemporary poets such as
Nejime Shōichi and Tomioka Taeko have written both prose poetry and poetry that often resembles prose. In fact, both poets have now more or less
abandoned poetry for prose, writing only fiction and nonfiction. Itō Hiromi
also writes poetry that often looks like prose and, since her shift several
years ago to California, has turned her hand to fiction. Nevertheless, she has
not abandoned poetry. Tanikawa Shuntarō’s poetry has approached prose at
several times in his career but he has no qualms about returning to “regular”
poetry. These contemporary poets occupy the middle ground on the spectrum I mentioned above but often travel to one end of the spectrum or the
other. This is a more realistic picture of contemporary verse practice than
that suggested by a clear division between prose poetry and the rest.
The translations in the volume are mostly Claremont’s own work and
are good, accurate guides to the original verses, but from time to time the
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author, who is usually generous in her acknowledgment of the work of other
scholars and translators, quotes renditions by other translators. I found four
or five instances where Claremont, no doubt inadvertently, has failed to
source the poem to the existing published translation but instead in the notes
cites only the original Japanese verse. These errors would need to be corrected if the book were to be reissued.
The book is a valuable addition to existing scholarship on modern
Japanese poetry and provides much valuable information on prose poetry,
and also on various poets, that was not hitherto available in English. The
book has various flaws, but overall the information and analysis contained
within demands our gratitude to Yasuko Claremont for the arduous scholarly labors she has undoubtedly undertaken in producing this work.
Inexorable Modernity: Japan’s Grappling with Modernity in the Arts.
Edited by Hiroshi Nara. Lexington Books, Lanham, Md., 2007. xiv, 269
pages. $90.00, cloth; $32.95, paper.
Reviewed by
TOM HAVENS
Northeastern University
Inexorable Modernity examines various tough questions asked by Japanese
writers, painters, and playwrights as they confronted modernity from the
late nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Nearly all of the contributors
to this volume are associated with the University of Pittsburgh or with
J. Thomas Rimer, the senior scholar to whom the book is dedicated. A brief
introduction by editor Hiroshi Nara, a linguist and intellectual historian,
frames 11 chapters as efforts “to show that there are a number of ways of
dealing with modernity even within one culture.” The authors “aim to capture the multifariousness of modernity” (p. 5) in Japan, a phenomenon the
editor believes was “inexorable” because “Japan sanctioned influences from
outside”—i.e., from the West. Surprisingly, Nara also contends that “the
centrality of perceived cultural tradition, along with the polyvalence, may be
the only grand narrative of Japan throughout history” (p. 12). This problematic view is only fitfully developed elsewhere in the volume.
Of four chapters on art and aesthetics, the most captivating is Mikiko
Hirayama’s crisp study of the major art critic Kojima Kikuo (1887–1950),
who attacked avant-garde styles by embracing an eclectic “new realism” in
Japanese oil painting during the 1930s. By “new realism,” Kojima meant
avoiding indiscriminate emulation of European methods and instead cultivating “solidity of form, superb draughtsmanship, and rich colors,” as well