Poetry
There will come a day
when poetry casts me off half-written.
Remember this.
Look, figs grow on fig trees—
it’s just the day
when I bear myself as fruit.
What more could be grafted onto me
in readiness for that day?
Something like clothes,
like leaves?
For that day when poetry tears me
without mercy, and runs.
I’m fine!
Even if I’m left stranded where the cannons lie.
That’s why I’m saying all this—
for the day when the thronging wasteland
hits a dead end in me.
And so,
I must not now make any kind of preparation
not for any kind of day;
I will not be ready.
Horses and Riots
When two horses
run through us
one more horse runs
the rift between them
When we set our faces to riot
we run with that
lone horse
not the two horses
on the edge
When we stop still
it is that solitary horse
which overtakes us
not the two horses
on the edge
When two thieves
run through us
one more thief runs
the rift between them
When two hollows
run through us
another runs
the rift between them
It is that final thief and
that last hollow
which fall in with us
to riot
Potato Talk
A pair of potatoes
came together
and contemplated
a mishmash
of nothing muches
After all that
they grew just a very little
bit more uneven
Three Poems
Ishihara Yoshiro
translated from the Japanese by John Newton Webb
Listen to the original read by Ishigamori Shintaro, Mino Megumi, and Shimizu Miho:
Ishihara Yoshiro was a wrestling poet. He wrestled with God, with meaning, with humanity, with darkness, with light. His experiences in Soviet POW camps after the war shook his faith in God, humanity, and himself, and left him with what he referred to as “quiet enemies,” with whom he would grapple for the remainder of his life. His writing was his arena.
This war experience provided him with powerful images for his own struggles and also for explorations of the contradictions and conflicts of human nature. In “Poetry”, for example, the line “Even if I’m left stranded where the cannons lie” is both his literal experience and a metaphor for human experience.
Another source of imagery was the Bible (Ishihara became a Christian as a young man, lost his faith during his POW years, then following his repatriation returned to God with a troubled faith). In “Poetry”, the fig tree image probably comes from the gospel account of Jesus shriveling a fig tree which wasn’t bearing fruit, and the word I have translated as “wasteland” is used in the Japanese Bible for the wilderness in which the Israelites wandered for forty years.
Among his war experiences, one which affected Ishihara particularly deeply was seeing men in the POW camps slowly losing their humanity (for example when extreme hunger overwhelmed friendship, morality, and speech and the only concern was to get food before someone else got it). “Horses and Riots” is one of his many poems which delves down into what drives people, and what happens when we have conflicting desires inside us.
The Japanese language is written as a combination of ideographs and two syllabaries. Choosing which of these to use to write particular words can alter the nuance, and broaden or narrow the meaning quite significantly. In the whole of “Potato Talk”, Ishihara only uses two ideographs and doesn’t use any for the key words. This actively suggests to the reader that each word carries more weight and a broader range of potential meaning than in normal usage. Trying to create this openness in English, which does not have this function, brings significant challenges to both vocabulary choice, and creating the right poetic space for the reader to explore.
In his writing, Ishihara was always striving to get as near as possible to expressing what cannot be said. His poetry is both the act of him thinking and an invitation for the reader to abandon comfortable categories and face squarely the unanswerable and inexpressible, to search for the truth with the understanding that we cannot understand more than the smallest part of what we find. As he expresses it in another poem,
This war experience provided him with powerful images for his own struggles and also for explorations of the contradictions and conflicts of human nature. In “Poetry”, for example, the line “Even if I’m left stranded where the cannons lie” is both his literal experience and a metaphor for human experience.
Another source of imagery was the Bible (Ishihara became a Christian as a young man, lost his faith during his POW years, then following his repatriation returned to God with a troubled faith). In “Poetry”, the fig tree image probably comes from the gospel account of Jesus shriveling a fig tree which wasn’t bearing fruit, and the word I have translated as “wasteland” is used in the Japanese Bible for the wilderness in which the Israelites wandered for forty years.
Among his war experiences, one which affected Ishihara particularly deeply was seeing men in the POW camps slowly losing their humanity (for example when extreme hunger overwhelmed friendship, morality, and speech and the only concern was to get food before someone else got it). “Horses and Riots” is one of his many poems which delves down into what drives people, and what happens when we have conflicting desires inside us.
The Japanese language is written as a combination of ideographs and two syllabaries. Choosing which of these to use to write particular words can alter the nuance, and broaden or narrow the meaning quite significantly. In the whole of “Potato Talk”, Ishihara only uses two ideographs and doesn’t use any for the key words. This actively suggests to the reader that each word carries more weight and a broader range of potential meaning than in normal usage. Trying to create this openness in English, which does not have this function, brings significant challenges to both vocabulary choice, and creating the right poetic space for the reader to explore.
In his writing, Ishihara was always striving to get as near as possible to expressing what cannot be said. His poetry is both the act of him thinking and an invitation for the reader to abandon comfortable categories and face squarely the unanswerable and inexpressible, to search for the truth with the understanding that we cannot understand more than the smallest part of what we find. As he expresses it in another poem,
Though you have seenwhat you have seenyou smash a glassyou slam a door openand they’re gone
from 事実 (The Truth)
Ishihara Yoshiro (1915–1977) was a major figure in post-war Japanese poetry. In 1938, he graduated in German from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and in the same year received Christian baptism, though his relationship with God was always complex. In 1939 he was conscripted and spent the war working as a Russian–Japanese interpreter. Following Japan’s defeat, he spent eight years in Russian POW camps. Returning to Japan in 1954, Ishihara was deeply affected by renewed exposure to his native tongue. That, and his encounter with new literature, convinced him to become a poet. His first collection was published in 1963, and by the end of the decade he was an influential voice in the literary world. He spoke of poetry as the recovery of lost language, and as a striving to say what cannot be said.
John Newton Webb was born in Dorset, England in 1981. He is the author of a number of plays, and has had poems, including other translations from Japanese, published in a variety of magazines. You can read some of John’s writing and his reflections on post-war Japanese poetry at johnnewtonwebb.blogspot.com. He lives with his family in Sapporo, Japan, where he works as the pastor of a church.
