The recognition of Japanese poetry is too often superficially doomed to the annals of tradition—and it’s understandable: what satisfies the Western fascination with the land of zen better than a haiku? But for those of us in search for something wilder, one only has to look back a few decades. Maddened and dazed, when the Beats exploded onto the global arts and literature scene, a new, ecstatic, insurrectionary poetry redefined the text, and poets from across the Pacific responded. Now, below is your crash course on the multitudinous and creatively proliferating intersection between Japan and Beat Poetry, by an expert at the scene of the beautiful crime, Taylor Mignon (with editorial assistance from translator and poet Jordan A. Y. Smith and Simon Scott).
This essay was originally published as the introduction to Tokyo Poetry Journal 5: Japan and the Beats.
It is the early 1990s, past midnight, and I am on a couch in a house in Yoyogi. The doorbell rings, and there’s knocking at the door. Shrugging off my slight inebriation, I scamper down the stairs to find cops who are enquiring about the loud TV, as the host had passed out, sound still blaring. I explain that the owner of the house made the disturbance, turn down the volume, and the cops leave.
The passed-out proprietor is Nishida Shunji, publisher of The Plaza: A Space for Global Human Relations, a bilingual journal of poetry, art, and prose. This was sometime after I had answered an ad in The Japan Times calling for a rewriter for Hitachi Review, a journal of technical articles written by Japanese engineers. With little idea of what I was rewriting, that production led us to what we really wanted to do, which was edit The Plaza. Mr. Nishida—a brilliant character, who liked to be called Leo—was a disheveled Japanese gentleman who could play a mean game of chess, liked to cycle, and often went around with his fly (social window) open. The connections made here at this job contributed to facilitating the meeting of several heavyweight Objectivist, Beat, and avant-garde poets.
One of the submitters to The Plaza was poet and editor Sherry Reniker, who had a knack for writing colorful correspondence and an experimental edge. At around that time, she was editing broadsides for the imprint published by Karl Young from Wisconsin, Light and Dust Books, whose authors included Morgan Gibson and a number of Japanese visual poets. Through her generous lead, I would correspond and eventually meet both Morgan and Objectivist poet Cid Corman, the latter based in Kyoto and the poet who first published Gary Snyder (Riprap, 1959) through his Origin press. (Cid told me he had met William Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Paris, at about the same time he was putting Naked Lunch together, and thought that he was very disarming and quite approachable, not at all acting in a manner of affected notoriety as one could expect from someone of Burroughs’ reputation.) The Plaza would prove to be fertile ground to publish the koan-like poetry of Morgan, the nature poetry of Antler (who goes by that name only), Jeff Poniewaz, and Sherry and Cid, much with a Beat bent.
During this period of the early to mid-nineties, I attended a monthly event for art performances, the Kyoto Connection, which I believe was organized by Ken Rodgers, managing editor of Kyoto Journal. There, I was first blown away by the reading of Nanao Sakaki. Nanao was Japan’s first hippy and Beat poet who would provide Japanese translations of Gary Snyder’s bilingual book Turtle Island (Yamaguchi, 1991) and become a force in inspiring communes to start sprouting up in Japan. His charisma was infectious—I admired not only his poetry but also considered the topics he raised. Reading and hearing his poetry, spoken in Buddhist chant style, made me consider the wonder of nature more deeply. Though we didn’t publish Nanao’s poetry in The Plaza, we later would in Printed Matter journal (published in Tokyo from 1977-2003), and then in the anthology Hillel Wright and I had edited, Poesie Yaponesia (Printed Matter Press, 2003).
Katagiri Yuzuru is another stellar poet in the Beat milieu. In the mid-90s, I contracted a bibliographic fetish and became fascinated by the rich offerings from past titles such as the Kyoto Review, the forerunner to Kyoto Journal, which must’ve been the first non-Japanese language, Beat-focused journal in Japan, publishing the likes of Michael Corr (whose prints illustrated Snyder’s Turtle Island), Kenneth Rexroth, Edith Shiffert, Morgan Gibson, Shiraishi Kazuko, and others. This modest yet pioneering journal was spearheaded by “Oral Poet” Katagiri Yuzuru (b. 1931), who had not only translated Bob Dylan’s lyrics into Japanese, but Kenneth Rexroth’s poetry as well. Mr. Katagiri famously translated the line “Everybody must get stoned” as “Everyone must have rocks thrown at them,” which is arguably a fine interpretation. He had also translated poems discovered by Rexroth of the poet Marichiko, who turned out to be Rexroth himself, writing through the personae of a Japanese woman in erotic throes. So Katagiri translated those into Japanese, which he called “復元の試み” (an experimental reconstruction), and gave away the secret that Marichiko was in fact a personae of Rexroth. From an early age, Katagiri was in a particularly unique position as he had been to San Francisco and witnessed the Beat zeitgeist firsthand. This direct knowledge situated him so well that he was the first Japanese to produce a Beat anthology in 1962, writing the introduction and providing many of the translations. Surprisingly, many included were Objectivist poets, as well as Denise Levertov.
In Japan, the journals publishing Beat and Beat-related work were or are VOU, Sei-en (Blue Flame), gui, TRAP, and 現代詩手帖 (The Modern Poetry Handbook). John Solt, in his critical biography Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Katue (1902-1978), says: “Among North American poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, familiarity with VOU magazine was regarded as a sign that one was cosmopolitan.” Among the American writers VOU would publish were Beats or poets they admired, such as Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Robert Creeley, Ginsberg, and many more. Pound would shine the light on the VOU Club in his influential ABC of Reading. The Modern Poetry Handbook (Gendai-shi techō), Japan’s most recognized poetry periodical and the one most focused on this current subject, showcased the following themes in Japanese: Beat Generation (1992), Allen Ginsberg (1997), and San Francisco Renaissance (2001).
Going back to reminiscing on editing The Plaza, at that same time, with Sherry Reniker, we edited a newsletter documenting much of the richness of literature in Japan—which was to be carried on Printed Matter, Tokyo’s former journal of literature and art founded in 1977—that included works such as fiction by Donald Richie and David Cozy. PM, co-edited by Carol Baba, featured many of the artists already mentioned here and fortunately allowed access to direct correspondence with visual and lexical poets and artists. More specifically Beat-focused than Printed Matter was another publication coming out of the mountains of Niigata called Blue Beat Jacket, edited by poet and translator Keida Yusuke, who remains a member of Sei-en and Sam Hamill’s translation buddy.
Richard Evanoff offered an alternative to the largely British-edited Printed Matter in a magazine called Edge, including work by Michael Corr, Edith Shiffert, and Karl Young (publisher of Beat writers such as Morgan Gibson and Gary Snyder). The anthology edited by Sherry Reniker, World’s Edge, contained many Beat and neo-Beat works. Another significant contributor to this cornucopia of publications was Taguchi Tetsuya with his two issues of Electric Rexroth, which showcased many surrealist and Beat writers––not necessarily directly related to Rexroth per se––but akin in its eclectic cosmopolitan spirit. It is satisfying that Rexroth’s promotion of Japanese classical poetry is reciprocated with journals publishing much of his work, or as in this case, in his honor.
In those pre-Internet days, many foreigners who made the trek to Japan had obviously been influenced by the Beats, and this tendency was shown in the journals they had contributed to and edited. In the US, several of the journals also had the exotic twist of Butoh. As internet use expanded, any number of parchment-based broadsides went by the wayside. At the same time, interest in anime and film seemed to eclipse interest in Japanese literature. These conditions are exacerbated by the inexorable march of time as the Beats and their scholars are dying.
Roughly between 1985 and 2005, and continuing to a lesser degree is an informal, loosely assembled group gathered around the board of director of Tokyo Poetry Journal, Dr. Solt, who produced and continues to produce and facilitate translations, bilingual events, art happenings, dance performances, photo and book design exhibitions, both in the US and in Japan. This cross-pollination was noteworthy because rather than a focus on classical Japanese haiku and tanka, this virtual movement centered on Modernist works in Japan: Kitasono Katue, Shiraishi Kazuko, visual poets Takahashi Shohachiro and Tsuji Setsuko, poet and translator of ee cummings Fujitomi Yasuo, editor Shima Yufuko, samisen performer and singer Nishimatsu Fuei, dancer Ohno Yoshito, photographer-critic Suzuki Masafumi, and performance poet Yarita Misako, to list a few.
This emphasis towards newer Japanese artistic works swung away from the Beat hemisphere of Rexroth and Snyder towards the sphere of Modernism, which in Japan too is strongly associated with surrealism. Somewhere Rexroth remarked that the Beat Movement wasn’t a unique phenomenon; the postwar angst and call for experimentation and revolution occurred also in 1910s Europe. As Rexroth wanted to distance himself from the hipsterism of the Beats, he was always a proponent of the international avant-garde, so this group of loosely formed artists and poets, following the lead of Rexroth, were both strongly related to the Beats and yet distinguished from them as well.
Rexroth first visited Kyoto in 1967. In 1972, and later in 1978, he returned to the city partly for a duo reading with Shiraishi Kazuko—transcripts from this historical 1978 reading comprise part of the new collection of Rexroth’s poetry translated into Japanese and published by Shichōsha (2017). Rexroth last visited Kyoto in 1980; his connections to Japan are more deeply respected here than in the States. In fact, Rexroth was once considered the American poet who was the most knowledgeable about Japanese culture, as stated by Kodama Sanehide in his book American Poetry in Japanese Culture (1984). At a Kenneth Rexroth conference at Kanda University in Chiba in 2007, Katagiri Yuzuru claimed that the next poet who knew the most about Japanese culture was Gary Snyder.
Among Kenneth Rexroth students and scholars we present here, namely Sam Hamill, John Solt, and Morgan Gibson, Solt is the most enlightened about Japanese culture as his knowledge encompasses not only classical Japanese poetry, but also a particular focus on Modernist poetry and art; and although Solt’s poetry isn’t as widely known as Hamill’s, he is carrying on a thread from Rexroth’s engagement in Japanese Modernism, by first translating the poetry of Shiraishi Kazuko. Though Rexroth never claimed or wanted to be a part of the Beat Generation, his hosting of the legendary Six Gallery reading, and his translations from classical Japanese poetry were, and are, loved by Beats and neo-Beats, past and present. Finally, his championing of Shiraishi, Japan’s most obvious Beat and post-Beat, establishes a formidably strong, direct association with the movement.
To further solidify his standing in Japan, Shichōsha has released Kenneth Rexroth: Selected Poems (and Prose) as a part of its 海外詩人文庫 (Library of Foreign Poets) series. Taguchi Tetsuya points out in his introduction to this new collection, “Rexroth is standing shoulder to shoulder with his literary peers in Japan before he has gained similar recognition in the US. . . he precedes any Beat poets in the ongoing series.” His accomplishments are so honored in Japan that Rexroth’s own library of 13,000 volumes has been shelved and catalogued at Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba. In a special room, among stacks of books that Rexroth collected, is the “poet’s desk”, on which he had written most of his poetry and prose in California, and apparently his large crystal ball (as remarked on by Morgan Gibson in Revolutionary Rexroth). As recently as 2014, a commoration of Rexroth’s thirty-second year of passing took place in Kyoto on June 6, at 無賓主庵, or “The Abode of No Guest & No Host,” where he resided before the house was moved to Doshisha Imadegawa Campus.
Now that Ira, Masafumi, and Yufuko have died, there is a void left, and there no longer seems to be a group of like-minded friends who are on a similar mission to promote avant-garde Japanese and American literature and art. Earlier I mentioned a shifting of American poets who are privy to Japanese culture, from Rexroth to Snyder and now to Solt. Who will carry on the Rexrothian torch to penetrate the nucleus of Japanese poetry and art in Japan? Transnational poet Sawako Nakayasu is perhaps best equipped to accomplish this, as her poetry is culturally syncretic, cutting-edge, and appealing. Her volume of translations of another VOU Club poet, Sagawa Chika, won the PEN Translation Award in 2015 (Canarium Books), and she contributed to Butoh studies through her translation of Tatsumi Hijikata’s, Costume en Face: A Primer of Darkness for Young Boys and Girls (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015). While sharply practicing arts and poetics in an avant-garde manner, she simultaneously has a strong social conscience. As Arts Program Coordinator at the International House with the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, she succeeded in bringing many aesthetically forward artists to Japan, thereby forging intercultural communication.
In Tokyo Poetry Journal’s fifth volume, we are proud in showing that Japanese poetry has greatly influenced the American Beats, and vice versa. Kerouac’s haiku and his knowledge of the verse form brought it to new experimental heights with live jazz musical performances, pioneered in a more prose-poetry style in Japan by Shiraishi Kazuko, an example perhaps of the reversal of mutual influences. Shiraishi was at the cutting edge of combining not only live jazz in her performances, but photography, Butoh, and flamenco dance, even performing with the dripping sound of an age-old iceberg from Hokkaido. Uniquely, Nanao was a leader of the Beat Generation in Japan before he even knew what the Beats were. Rexroth’s volumes of translations from Man’yoshū and Hyakunin Isshu were in every respectable Beats’ bookcases. His example of translating Shiraishi led to a movement of recognizing Japanese avant-garde poetry and art. The lineage goes from Rexroth to Shiraishi, Solt’s study of Kitasono Katue, Miryam Sas on Japanese surrealism, Sawako Nakayasu on Sagawa Chika, just to mention a few of the pioneers who are successively bringing attention to an important, but previously ignored movement and the poets associated with it. More than ever before, Japanese poetry and art created in Beat and modernist modes is gaining the reputation of standing it deserves, shoulder to shoulder with their Western peers.
Taylor Mignon is Editor Emeritus and co-founder of Tokyo Poetry Journal and has advised Japan-themed issues for Prairie Schooner (Summer 1996), Atlanta Review (Spring/Summer 2002) and Vallum (Montreal, 2005). He also translated surrealist poet Shōzō Torii, published as Bearded Cones & Pleasure Blades (2013) and edited the special issue of ToPoJo themed on Japanese Beats and butoh. He is attempting to finish a project on VOU Visual Poetry begun with Karl Young.
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