Master poet and sculptor Takamura Kotaro (1883-1956) candidly explores his grief and longing in these selections from the Chieko Poems, our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. As translator Leanne Ogasawara writes: “The Chieko Poems tell the story of the poet’s love for his wife. Reading the anthology chronologically, we begin with poems that describe the passion of their early romance and elopement against the wishes of their parents, following along as the poems become concerned with the trauma of Chieko’s mental illness and early death in 1938. Even after she is gone, Chieko remained the central figure in Kotaro’s life, and he would continue to write poem after poem about her. [. . .] The Chieko Poems are unforgettable as much for their early romance and passion as for the sense of loss and recovery expressed in the later poems. Kotaro slowly came to take comfort in this idea that through her death, Chieko returned to nature becoming imbued in all the things around him—even within his own body.” The selections below are three poems written after Chieko’s death. Kotaro’s sorrow accompanies his longing and desire as the speaker fixates on the beauty of his beloved’s physical form. With imagery that is at once reverential and abject, the speaker views his beloved’s body as something inhabiting both the natural and spiritual worlds.
A Desolate Homecoming
Chieko, who wanted to return home so badly
Has come home dead.
Late one October night, I sweep a small corner
of the empty atelier
Cleaning, purifying
There I place Chieko.
And in front of this lifeless body
I remain standing a long time.
Someone turns the screen upside down.
Someone lights the incense.
Someone puts makeup on Chieko.
Things somehow get done.
As the sun rises and then sets
The house grows busy, buried in flowers
There is something like a funeral
Then, Chieko is gone.
And I stand alone
in this now empty and dark atelier.
Tonight people say the full moon is beautiful
*
Chieko Who Has Become an Element
Chieko has already returned to an element.
I don’t believe in the independent existence
of the spirit.
And yet
Chieko exists.
Chieko is within my flesh.
Chieko is clinging fast to me—
A phosphorescent light burning in my cells
Teasing me
Prodding me
Never allowing me to fall prey to the
feeble-mindedness of an old man.
The spirit is another name for the body.
And Chieko, who is within my flesh,
Is the far north of my soul.
Chieko is there as unending judge.
Not right when the Chieko within me
is asleep
I am only okay when I hear her
voice whispering in my ear.
Chieko is within all of me, purely
Joyfully leaping within me.
Chieko, who has become an element,
Is even now within my flesh, smiling at me
*
A Nude
I long for Chieko’s naked body.
Full of modesty
Awe-inspiring as a constellation
Undulating as a mountain range
Always covered in a thin veil of mist
Her form was endlessly sheathed in dew.
I remember the smallest details
of her naked body—
Even the small mole on her back—
And still now
These memories, polished by time
Glimmer and shine.
My destiny is to give birth
Once more, by my hands
To that naked body
This is my fate, and
Only for this do I eat
Meat and vegetables from the fields
Rice, wheat and butter
For when Chieko’s nude is left
for the world
Only then can I, at last
Return back to nature.
Translated from the Japanese by Leanne Ogasawara
Kōtarō Takamura (1883-1956) was a famous poet and sculptor. When he was young, he studied art in France, where he was influenced by the work of Rodin. He is best known in Japan for his free verse poetry about his wife, Chieko, and her struggle with mental illness. Theirs is one of the most famous love stories in Japanese literary history. In an age when marriages were arranged and romantic love of one’s spouse was rarely spoken of, his love poems took 1940s Japan by storm. They remain popular to this day.
Leanne Ogasawara has worked as a translator from the Japanese for over twenty years. Her translations include academic works, philosophy, poetry, and documentary film. Her translations of Japanese poetry have appeared in Transference Journal of Translation, published by faculty in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University and the University of Iowa’s Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. Her creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Kyoto Journal, River Teeth/Beautiful Things, Hedgehog Review, Pleiades Magazine, the Dublin Review of Books, the Pasadena Star newspaper, Sky Island Journal, etc. She also has a monthly column at the science and arts blog 3 Quarks Daily.
*****
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