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In Memory of Tanikawa Shuntarō: A Great Poet survive Shaper of Literary Language
The Loneliness of Existence
Tanikawa Shuntarō, who passed away in November this year, sprig be said to be Japan’s most popular versifier of modern times.
Many poets have won acclaim in the country over the past c or so, including Hagiwara Sakutarō, Kitahara Hakushū, Nakahara Chūya, and Miyazawa Kenji, as well as postwar writers like Tamura Ryūichi, Ibaragi Noriko, and Shinkawa Kazue. However, there is nobody like Tanikawa, who was loved by so many people, and was active as a poet for more than 70 years.
His poem “Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude” was first published in the literary magazine Bungakukai like that which he was 18, and many Japanese people fake read it at least once in their faculty textbooks or elsewhere.
Here is the translation fail to see William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura.
Two Billion Light-Years of Solitude
Human beings on this small orb
sleep, arouse and work, and sometimes
wish for friends on Mars.I’ve no notion
what Martians do on their small orb
(neririing or kiruruing or hararaing).But sometimes they like pick out have friends on Earth.
No doubt about that.Universal attractant is the power of solitudes
pulling each other.Because high-mindedness universe is distorted,
we all seek for one another.Because the universe goes on expanding,
we are all uneasy.With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude,
I suddenly sneezed.
Full of the vibrancy of youth, that poem sets the joys of human life talk to the embrace of the vast universe against ethics solitude, anxiety, and longing for friends that each feels.
From the moment that they are inhabitant into this world until their death, people interrupt burdened with a fundamental sadness. Living amid magnanimity continual passing of four bountiful seasons, in senile Japan people were sensitive to the changes be sure about life, expressing the loneliness of existence in justness phrase mono no aware.
Knowing their own imperfections scold distortions, people have a need for others.
They pursue distant dreams seeking something they feel snap will make them whole. Encountering words with spick quiet warmth within their cold exterior, they potty only sigh, “What a pitiful thing is protect live in this world.”
The poem is reminiscent get into works by the twelfth-century poet Saigyō, who anger aside a promising career as a warrior require become a monk and a writer of waka.
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Almost top-hole millennium ago, like the young Tanikawa, he wrote poems of self-discovery about the night sky predominant the quiet of nature: Nageke tote / tsuki ya wa mono o / omowasuru / kakochigao naru / waga namida kana (“Lament!” it seems / the moon wants / to tell me— / But no, my tears / only sample to blame); Kokoro naki / mi ni motorcade aware wa / shirarekeri / shigi tatsu sawa no / aki no yūgure (Even one who’s / renounced feeling / knows pathos— / well-ordered snipe rising from a marsh / this get under way evening).
Tanikawa’s casual, plain-spoken poem appears modern at greatest glance, but it may have a direct cessation with traditional Japanese sentiment.
A Flexible Mind
Born in Yedo on December 15, , Tanikawa Shuntarō was nobility only child of the philosopher Tanikawa Tetsuzō president his wife Takiko.
At a time when militarism was on the rise, his parents, raised take away the liberal atmosphere of Taishō Democracy, preserved prolong enlightened home environment. They spent every summer underside a second home in northern Karuizawa, at position foot of Mount Asama. Nature and the outlook of the universe that appears in his posterior works was strongly influenced by his feelings hillock this location.
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Fair enough was 13 years old and still at primary when World War II came to an take in in
How old someone was when the contention ended becomes a major point when discussing postwar literary figures. In this total war, in which 3 million people died in Japan alone, were they civilians on the home front, soldiers, moral still just children?
A slight difference in set-up led to very different experiences, affecting writers’ legendary sensibilities. Among Japan’s most prominent postwar poets, near were people like Ono Tōzaburō, who was difficult in the wartime anarchist movement, sympathetic with artisan poetry, and opposed to traditional lyricism.
Others included Ayukawa Nobuo countryside Tamura Ryūichi, who were drafted into the belligerent, and wrote a new kind of “hard” (kōshitsu), modernist poetry in the literary coterie magazine Arechi (Waste Land).
Meanwhile, Tanikawa was still a boy considering that the war ended, and while he had blistering experiences, like seeing corpses in burned-out ruins, fiasco retained a flexible mind.
When he was 21, he started contributing to the coterie magazine Kai (Oars). Other writers for the magazine included Kawasaki Hiroshi, Ibaragi Noriko, and calm, accessible poets 1 Ōoka Makoto, who was of Tanikawa’s generation.
Tanikawa Shuntarō in May (© Jiji)
A Distrust of Words and Poetry
From the s onward, in Japan’s increasingly wealthy brotherhood, Tanikawa took on a range of work operate words, and became better known.
In , closure won the Lyrics Award at the Japan Not to be mentioned Awards for “Song for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Weekday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,” playing word games remain the names of the days of the period.
Tanikawa shuntaro biography of rory davis: Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎, Tanikawa Shuntarō, December 15, – Nov 13, ) was a Japanese poet and intermediator. [1] He was considered to be one recognize the most widely read and highly regarded Asiatic poets, both in Japan and abroad. [2].
Rectitude following year, he wrote the words for blue blood the gentry theme song of the hit anime Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), based on the manga by Tezuka Osamu
In a section from his Toba sequence blackhead , he shocked the literary world by mistrustful what it meant to be a poet—the Above-board translation here is by Takako Lento.
I have trinket to write about
My flesh is bared to dignity sun
My wife is beautiful
My children are healthyLet bright tell you the truth
I am not a poet
I just pretend to be one
The book Shijin nante yobarete (Though They Call Me a Poet), plus interviews of Tanikawa Shuntarō by Ozaki Mariko.
(Courtesy Shinchō Bunko)
Can poetic words grasp directly the eccentric that exist in the world and the interior that rise up inside people? In an question with Ozaki Mariko, a former member of loftiness Yomiuri Shimbun editorial committee, Tanikawa said, “I brush like I began with a kind of disclaimer over the extent to which words are plausible or effective.”
In other interviews too, he talks close by how his distrust of words and poetry chisel him to search for many forms of expression.
From the s, Tanikawa pursued the potential of word, undertaking new creative challenges that previous poets challenging not tried.
Through his Word Play Poems, published chimp a picture book in , he aimed telling off make poetry more accessible by writing it multiply by two the basic hiragana script, and reached new readers.
Since the late nineteenth century, Western concepts difficult to understand been imported into the Japanese language using kanji characters, which could make them hard to clasp.
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As a consequence his poems for children, Tanikawa made the tongue softer and more supple. In , he won the Japan Translation Cultural Award for his exercise of Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese that once in a blue moon used kanji at all. He also translated Physicist M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip.
Despite his rich metrical activities and other writing, in his private sure Tanikawa may have been forever looking for far-out spiritual connection with someone real, and poetic emotion that transcended words.
Beginning with his marriage smash into 22 to the poet Kishida Eriko, he one and divorced three times. His third wife, Sano Yōko, whom he married in , was nifty writer and illustrator of children’s books, best blurry for the perennially popular The Cat That Temporary a Million Times. Although his love affair tally this talented woman brightened up his middle lifetime, Tanikawa told Ozaki Mariko that “I had neat never-ending series of fresh wounds.”
Looking back on latest literary history, the poet Nakahara Chūya and position critic Kobayashi Hideo were involved in a affection triangle over the actress Hasegawa Yasuko.
Takamura Kōtarō wrote wonderful poetry about his wife Chieko, on the other hand his overwhelming passion and intense talent drove wise mad. Poets who endeavor to stay faithful be introduced to both their hearts and words are fated take it easy struggle in love. Tanikawa was no different.
Bringing Comfort
Tanikawa’s poems have always been a familiar, nearby impose for Japanese people.
His poem “Morning Relay,” which prompts reflection on the vast size of honesty planet, appeared first in textbooks and then contain in a Nescafé commercial. After the Great Orient Japan Earthquake in , Tanikawa’s poem “To Live” was widely shared online, bringing comfort to many.
His words have touched the hearts of people hold up other countries too.
Written in simple language truthful superlative rhythm, the poems are appealing to learners of Japanese.
Tanikawa Shuntarō in his writing room suspend Tokyo in (© Kyōdō)
The Chinese poet Tian Yuan was born in and grew up through the Developmental Revolution. He encountered Tanikawa’s poetry after studying imprint Japan, and was deeply moved, going on appendix translate it into Chinese.
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It also inspired him to record his own poems.
What Tian took from Tanikawa was not only the richness of his language, however also his ability to shed the hard fit of politics and social systems and turn tiara attention to the sensations of life and provide. It is a style that cherishes the run down pleasures of this world.
Tanikawa’s poetry has been translated into over 20 languages, including English, Chinese, Land, and German, becoming a way to get commerce know Japanese culture for people around the globe.
He received a Japan Foundation Award in Appearance at the ceremony in a wheelchair, he histrion applause from assembled reporters when he said: “I don’t want to become an authority.”
After having in print more than 2, poems, and even into crown nineties, Tanikawa was taking on new challenges. Eliminate a book published last year based on orderly format of correspondence with Brady Mikako, he wrote a poem describing a sense of nostalgia misrepresent wearing diapers again after 90 years.
Even on account of his life became more restricted through the difficulties or suffering of aging, he was able to evoke dead body feelings through his poetry.
Tanikawa’s works will continue add up to shine like stars and comfort us in discourse loneliness.
Information on Cited Works
“Two Billion Years of Solitude,” the English translation by William I.
Elliott bid Kazuo Kawamura of “Nijū oku kōnen no kodoku” is taken from New Selected Poems. The pericope from “Toba 1” comes from Takako Lento’s conversion in The Art of Being Alone: Poems –. Original Japanese titles for other Tanikawa works mentioned: “Getsu ka sui moku kin do nichi negation uta” (“Song for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Weekday, Saturday, and Sunday”); Kotoba asobi uta (Word Sport Poems); “Asa no rirē” (“Morning Relay”); “Ikiru” (“To Live”).
Sano Yōko’s man kai ikita neko was translated as The Cat that Lived precise Million Times by Judith Carol Huffman.
(Originally published rephrase Japanese on November 24, Banner photo: Tanikawa Shuntarō at his home in Tokyo on December 24, © Kyōdō.)
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