日付変更線 International Date Line

In the first few months after the March 11, 2011 disaster in Japan, a series of poetry vigils were held throughout the country, bringing together both new and established writers working in various genres. The result was the construction of a relatively democratic atmosphere in the literary world in which people could share their new works inspired by the disasters in the hopes of raising consciousness about the problems and money for the disaster victims. Arai Takako was a frequent participant in these public poetry vigils. Among the poems she read  during these readings were a number that were eventually published in her 2013 book Beds and Looms (Betto to shoki). Among them is the satirical and humorous poem Galapagos (Garapagosu). The title comes from the fact that commentators, especially in the wake of 2011, sometimes compared the Japanese archipelago to the isolated group of Ecuadorian islands where change takes place at its own unique pace. Specifically, the word is frequently invoked in metaphors to describe the ways that Japanese business and economic development proceeds according to its own, local logic, cut off from the desires, needs, and practices of the rest of the world. With its playful tone and quick wit, Arai’s poem helped to lighten the somber atmosphere of the vigils, and quickly became an audience favorite. 

Galapagos

Just gossip! The damn economy is Just a fairy tale! Stock prices, Come on and do it! 　　Make fun of them all the more I’m sick of it All this goth clothing, all this Uniqlo-ing It’s a mess! Eros Left out all the time! Thanatos Bring it back to life! 　　Alienate them all the more Incessant cellphones Microsoft monsters 　　―――　Isn’t that all you’d ever let us wear? 　　　　　　Wasn’t that our national uniform? 　　　　　　Before the quake 　　　　　　The tsunami of the recession 　　　　　　All we ever worried about?

That Is our protective wear It thrives on adversity It can withstand high waves Up to six meters tall No It’s more like swimming gear It looks like it might drown In the cold global Womb of grotesque globalism In Lehman Brothers Salaried men Don’t want anything Don’t say anything Won’t do anything, won’t do it anymore Girls, boys, the intermediate sex Not more procreating, unisex 　　　Just look 　　At that fission 　They say they can’t get any fusion Between those sperm-like neutrons

It’s just been let go! Nuclear fission Just exposed! The womb of the reactor dome too Fuel rods (nenryōbō), safety hats (anzenbō), egg cells (ransaibō), stinginess (kechinbō), thieves (dorobō), Refrigerators (reibō), heaters (danbō), Babies (akanbō), deceased (butsunbō), floating (ukabō) on the great plain of the sea, on the verge of screaming (orabō), The reactor building about to fly off (buttobō), Embankments (teibō), conspiracies (inbō), ministerial offices (kanbō), 　　Unbelievabō 　Incredibō TEPCO 　　Puts on their Uniqlo 　To bulwark The tsunami

　　We’ll make electricity 　In our con-domes Is a half-life Good enough?

Us -- Translated by Jeffrey Angles

Translator’s note: As she watched the press coverage of the Fukushima meltdown, Arai was surprised that by complete coincidence, many of the vocabulary items that had started filling the news ended with the sound bō—nenryōbō (fuel rods), anzenbō (safety hats), teibō (embankments), inbō (conspiracies), kanbō (ministerial offices), and so on. Arai produces a flood of these words in rapid succession, replicating in her own particular satirical way the small tsunami of these words that washed over the Japanese press in the wake of 3.11. 

Although this poem evokes laughs, it also touches upon many serious themes. She has taken many of the issues that filled headlines in the Japanese press in the year after the Fukushima meltdown and synthesized them into an organic whole: the downturn in the Japanese economy, the ongoing nuclear crisis, and even the success of the inexpensive popular clothing store Uniqlo, which is so popular that it began to look like a national uniform. In fact, in the wake of so much bad news in 2011, Uniqlo’s entry into several new, major global markets in 2012 proved to be a ray of hope to the media, which seized upon it as a step forward for Japanese business and the economy. Given this publicity, it is perhaps no surprise that Arai singles out Uniqlo for particular attention in this poem. 

 Elsewhere in the poem, Arai makes a brilliantly playful reference to the media’s ongoing concern about the low national birthrate using the image of nuclear reactions. Arai notes that, given the low birth rate, Japan does not have much “fusion” of sperm and ova; instead what the Japanese population has is mostly “fission”—namely the breaking apart of radioactive isotopes at the meltdown at Fukushima. Arai begins to criticize the discriminatory idea, circulated in the popular media and on blogs, that young people from Fukushima who had exposure to radiation should consider using condoms rather than having unprotected sex for fear that radiation might have affected the genetic information in their reproductive organs. In fact, when asked about this poem in 2013, she commented that when she encountered media coverage warning Fukushima residents to use condoms, she thought, “My goodness! Fukushima affected everything about us, even our sex lives!” 

In the final stanza, she jokingly suggests that since the top has blown off the dome-shaped inner reactor at Fukushima, the population now has to use condoms, and perhaps that that friction should be the way that Japan should produce its energy. The ambiguous final question “Is a half-life / Good enough?” (hangenki / de ii no ka) could be read in a couple of ways. The word translated here as “half-life” (hangeki) meaning the period which it takes a radioactive particle to lose half of its radioactivity, is written in Japanese with three characters meaning “a period of lessening by half.” Although obviously inspired by the word from chemistry, Arai is using it here to ask if whether or not it makes sense to have a period during which sexual pleasure is lessened or perhaps diminished by the barrier of the condom, especially in the light of the issue of Japan’s low birth rate, even though conservatives might feel a longer period of refraining from direct, procreative sexual contact is warranted. 

Arai leaves these questions unresolved and hanging in the air, followed only by the single word watashi-tachi, meaning “us” or “we.” Interestingly, this word is not grammatically connected to the lines before it and thus exists in isolation from the rest of the work. The reader is left pondering the relationship between the word and the themes presented elsewhere. First of all, who is the “us/we”? The author and her partner? Perhaps a larger pool of people—the author and her readers, wherever in Japan they might live? Perhaps the entire population of Japan? And more importantly, what is the relationship between the “us/we” (however it may be defined) and the themes presented elsewhere in the work? How will Fukushima affect “us”? Arai leaves those questions enticingly and provocatively open. She provides no simple solutions or answers, perhaps because  solutions or answers have yet to emerge from the wreckage of Fukushima.

As for This Moment 

The first things that broke down were words The reason we did not notice was because Their destruction came so slowly We noticed after the world had ended When we tried to mend cracks and cave-ins Words did not respond That was when we finally understood That the world is made of words When words slowly broke down The world, unseen, broke down as well  * It may be that the broken world might be restored It may be that words will not work for that It is probably best not to rush Words broken over time Can only heal with time Best not to put too much faith in the idea That if broken, they will heal themselves Know this instead, that when words broke down You broke down as well That you too are made of words  * Best now to remember yourself before the dawn A single word was born in the darkness inside you The newborn word called another word to it Words joined hands and rose up together At that moment, you stood, an infant unafraid The world of youth rose up precariously You did not rush back then You did not even know to rush You should remember that time You are before the dawn once again  * Scientists tell us The world started with the big bang If that theory is right Then the world started with destruction The world, as it began, rose up slowly From our perspective, the world began With a word, but it did not rush It grew weak over time, slowly waiting If we too are to rise with the word Then we too should follow its example and wait  * You think that you must sing But you lament that you cannot Your silence is likely a sign To you and world, both broken, to wait Sleep with the darkness, rise with the light Wait patiently through your daily work For one word, then another To wake within and rise up That moment will be the end and the beginning of the world We will have grown old and, in the same moment, reborn

-- Translated by Jeffrey Angles

Translator’s Notes: 

The poems “Since Then” (あの時から), and “Lovers in a Time of Nuclear Energy” (原子力時代の恋人たち), appeared in the January 2012 issue of Handbook of Contemporary Poetry『現代詩手帖』. Takahashi has commented in private conversations that these two poems were among the works that he considers to be the greatest successes of his poems about the March 11, 2011 disasters. 

Since Then Then the wall of separation collapsed Since then, our world has been both this world and that Food in this world was bathed in cruel, radiating light Becoming, just like that, food of death, scorched in the flames of that other world We face one another across a blanched table, exchanging glances Both of us alive, yet also pale inhabitants of that world Look, outside the windows covered with black cloth, a herd of starved cattle From that world overflows the streets, drooling as they march The black dogs of Hades bare their fangs, about to bark —No, to tell the truth This world and that were contiguous right from the start We never acknowledged it, but all that separated them Was our own consciousness—in that moment The walls suddenly disappeared from our minds Since then, we have all been people of that world Squatting in the rubble of that world, which is also our own Even though no death or resurrection will come 

Lovers in a Time of Nuclear Power  You, the ones I love, I love, I love You, my lovers in in an age of nuclear power Beyond the window covered in black cloth There is not a single tree to cast a shadow Nor a single bird to wing through the air Our field of vision is filled with thronging towers of flame Invisible, infinitesimal gods that split and fissure continuously Sealed in darkness, we are buck-naked There is no day, nor night, hundreds of times No, thousands of times, we suck at one another Ten thousand times, one hundred thousand times We rub ourselves together Now, no love juices overflow, no words of love leak We discharge blood-water, painful itches run through our branches The dead, dead, dead children born of our imaginary childbirth Are covered in blood, for them we open the garbage in the corner of the room We are reduced to skin and bones, our skeletons show through Wrinkled sacks of skin merely holding dried-up organs Our thin chests press against one another, our pelvises shudder without end Other than one another’s eye sockets which we seek out We do not see, nor do we try to All we have are one another, the partners we will love Perhaps we are making love now, that is unclear We suck at one another, we bite one another, we indulge ourselves Until there is no we, nor me, nor you In the world of light beyond the window covered in black cloth There are no longer any earth and stars, our field of vision Is filled with forests of towers of our endless desire That continue to multiply, that continue to spew out flame 

--Translated by Jeffrey Angles     

For a film of Takahashi reading selections from this poem, click here. The original Japanese for this poem, written in response to the March 11, 2011 disasters in Japan, was published in the June 2011 issue of the poetry journal『現代詩手帖』Handbook of Contemporary Poetry. TAKAHASHI Mutsuo These Things Here and Now

If April is the cruelest month in that country Then March was even unrelenting in this country As the snow danced on top the sea It crashed one layer of seabed into another Mixing new desires into the ancient memories of tide Seawater, awakened from slumber, grew into great waves Took aim at the land, and descended again and again Leaving vast quantities of debris and mountains of sadness We watched this over and over as we wandered the line Between dream and wakefulness

  *

It was not just daily life as we once knew it That the black wave of March assaulted The Dwarf God imprisoned under tight control suddenly escaped Swelled before our eyes into Daimajin, filling heaven and earth People set adrift whole settlements at a time Not just one village, not just one town But an entire country, no, the entire world Entered into an endless Era of drift 

 *

The rain came (Rain mixing with snow, snow mixing with rain) The rain falls (Will the rain bathe the rubble and soothe the dead?) The rain falls (Will the rain console all the people washed away and caress the abandoned fields?) The rain falls (Will the rain cool the blazing reactor and pacify the wild nucleus?) The rain falls (Does the rain represent hope or yet another disaster?) The rain falls (The rain continues to fall on the broken land and sickly sea) 

 *

Let us collect our thoughts, what is nuclear power? Mother Nature’s greatest gift to humanity, or rather, The miscarriage after the child rapes and impregnates its own mother? Isn’t it true that we shut a demon in a cage and forced it to work Then when its power was gone, we had it buried alive? Isn’t it true that the buried, anguished corpse has regained its breath And has returned, harboring its anxiety and fear for revenge? Now is the time it reveals its secrets tucked away 

 *

The rain lets up and a great rainbow hangs in the sky Not the rainbow of promise, but terrifying rainbow of our sentencing Deformed fish will lose their teeth and flood our shores Sick fruit, smeared with blood, will fall on our land The wind, carrying abundant poison, will grow wet and heavy The light will turn into countless needles and attack us persistently All of our organs will rise in revolt inside Our brains will burn with fever, broil, and melt We close our windows and cover the glass with cloths But the flood of color that has burned its way into our membranes Does not disappear, even when we close and rub our eyes 

 *

We leave the televisions on and watch We read and reread the newspapers from top to bottom We scour the internet for unpoisoned vegetables We call all over looking for non-radiated water Are we onlookers disguised in our masks and sunglasses? If so, we are also victims and wanderers We float along in the arks of our homes Sufferers who float along continuously Not knowing our destination 

 *

What heals the sufferer is only more suffering We rail against the outrageousness of fate and tear at our shirts We protest against the unfairness of providence and weep continuously When cries catch in the throat, they comfort the lamenter The flow of tears eventually purifies the one who weeps But we are not comforted, we are not purified The reason is that our grievances and protests Are finally against ourselves, our avarice, and our idleness We cannot be easily comforted We cannot be easily purified We must be scorned over and over We must be beaten over and over again 

 *

Will we be fortunate?  If so, we must prick up our ears all the more We must turn our eyes to what has remained The mute words of the countless dead snatched by the waves The silence of the swelling numbers of displaced withstanding privation And the brilliance of the youth who have stood up from inaction Supporting them is none other than the silence of the dead and displaced What we must learn is their anonymity, their gracious unconditionality 

 *

I write these things here and now It does not matter that I, the writer, am anyone in particular I should be a person without name and without individuality A person with eyes but without a face, with hands tied directly to sight Hands that must remember how to write in the darkness Eyes that must see neither hope nor disappointment, only truth

Translated by Jeffrey Angles

伊藤比呂美『河原荒草』の英訳のビデオCM

A・K・アフェレズによる伊藤比呂美『河原荒草』の新書評 A.K. Afferez on Hiromi Itō's Wild Grass on the Riverbank

Here is an excerpt of a new, enthusiastic review. For the entire review, click here.

MINAE MIZUMURA 

was born in Tokyo, moved to New York at the age of 12, and studied French literature at Yale University. Acclaimed for her audacious experimentation and skilful storytelling, Mizumura has won major literary awards for all four of her novels, one of which, a true novel, was published in English in 2013. The English translation of her bestselling book of criticism, the fall of language in the age of english, was published in January 2015. She lives in Tokyo.

Juliet Winters Carpenter studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. She is a two-time recipient of the Japan–United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, first in 1980 for her translation of Kobo Abe's novel secret rendezvous and again in 2014-15 for her translation of Minae Mizumura's a true novel.

伊藤比呂美「コヨーテ」（朗読ｘ音楽）

小説家ブレーク・バトラーによる伊藤比呂美『河原荒草』の書評

I couldn't be more thrilled. One of the most provocatively poetic of young American novelists, Blake Butler (author of There is No Year), has written a review of my new translation of Hiromi Itō's Wild Grass on the Riverbank on the website Vice.  In it, he writes,

The work follows the travel of a family of many children, their mother, and a father who is both alive and dead, through fields of insane fauna, dystopian wasteland landscape, eerie haunted temporary homes, refrains of song fragments, skin plagues, and breakouts. 

Reminiscent of the plunging-network narratives of Alice Notley's Descent of Alette and Amos Tutuola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the book goes into both the multivalent psyches of the human landscape and the ground we walk on, forging between them a trek that is by turns spiritual, spasmodic, romantic, furious, contemplative, and insane.

For the entire review, click here.  The photo that appears with the review is from a reading that the two of us did during the fall of 2014 in South Bend, Indiana in the home of Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson, the editors of Action Books who have supported this translation from its very inception.

Transference is published by the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University. Dedicated to the celebration of poetry in translation, the journal publishes translations from Arabic, Chinese, French and Old French, German, classical Greek, Latin, and Japanese into English verse. The journal features translations as well as commentaries on the art and process of translating.

『びーぐる』第25号に新作掲載