from Scent of Nanako
1
Beyond the window curtain, it's probably raining but
inside, like a skylark twittering away, fellatio for him.
2
Your dick finishes up with a twitch and gets small
looking like a little bird in my hand
3
"Damn, you really can spread your legs" just to make him say it
with all her willpower, she spreads them: Nanako wants to win
4
Right before my period, the sunset grows ruddy but
it's okay: SEX without a condom this time
5
So obvious, the parabola drawn by the flying bouquet—
on purpose, Nanako fails to catch it
6
Semen that warmly went inside me
now flows out of me—after you fell asleep
7
On the dark stairs of a new town
when your hand went into my panties, I'm all the more estranged
8
They take their nap in the afternoon, one so unusual with these sunny rays
and one quite unfitting for adultery, cigarettes, and such
9
The body of the teenaged boy with his scissors
keeps slicing up blue origami paper, nice and slow
10
Those fingers of the hair stylist, that teenaged boy—
How she'd like to have him cut her kinky hair, down there on Nanako
(1988)
from What Does the Resurrection Mean to Me?
"Good Morning"
1
"Good morning." I hear the voice so clear and carefree
of a Person who stands waiting on the other side of the path
2
His voice now—low, clear, and soft—
is the voice we've longed for most in all the world
3
That Person, whose clothes are white, and his right hand raised,
makes a slightly mischievous grin
4
Nothing but wounds . . . , blackened by the sun . . . , that high instep . . . ,
those long toes . . . , no doubt, these are the feet of my Master!
5
To come see me, did you first come all this way
for someone like me—?
6
I thought I knew which form You would take yet
why, why such a humble one, why Lord?
7
Even after the worst night after I have thrice
tasted His anger, now the dawn comes
8
Ah! Here I am, crying for the first time in ages
Dead for so long, but here am I now!
9
What could it be, this wonderful smell?
Every time my Lord smiles, every time He winks
10
Your quiet eyes command me, they are always that way
No. More than before, stronger yet kinder—
11
Death, Ah Death is no more
Now and ever You will be by my side
(2004)
Selected Tanka
Hayashi Amari
translated from the Japanese by Jon Holt
In her tanka, Hayashi uses an irregular two-line form that makes translation of her poetry challenging. Since the modernization of tanka from the early 1900s, Japanese poets have experimented with writing their 31-syllable poetry in multiple lines rather than the traditional one-line format. Hayashi is no exception and uses the two-line format, usually balancing 5-7-5 syllables in the first line and then 7-7 in the next (or vice-versa). Japanese readers would intuitively parse her 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm across the line break. Medieval waka poets like Fujiwara no Teika and Saigyō invented a technique of creating two units of an abstract feeling and a concrete image using an implicit break with units of 5-7-5 and 7-7. In Hayashi's two-line tanka, the image or action of line two drifts away from the one in the preceding line, as if the camera were panning or drawing back in order to reframe the scene. I preserved her two-line format so that the reader can sense the visual flow of images and emotions as the poem shifts, allowing for a second take on the tender moments "Nanako" experiences or the luminous ones felt by the personae of "Good Morning".
Scent of Nanako is uninhibited in its eroticism. Each tanka scene lingers on the details of the lovers' bodies. These nureba ("wet scenes")—a term borrowed from kabuki—is what critic Oketani Hideaki uses to describe how Hayashi problematizes the "stage" of her dramatic tanka: "As if drawing a picture, the poet versifies a nureba. Although it seems that the sexy image is the foreground, isn't the sex actually in the background? Hayashi hides the foreground from us. In her tanka, there is always some overtone of sadness that comes before the depicted poetic scene. We hear that sad sound from its near-concealment in the foreground."1
1Oketani Hideaki, "Kaisetsu" ("Commentary") in Hayashi Amari, MARS*ANGEL, (Kawade Bunko Bungei, 1993) 187.
Scent of Nanako is uninhibited in its eroticism. Each tanka scene lingers on the details of the lovers' bodies. These nureba ("wet scenes")—a term borrowed from kabuki—is what critic Oketani Hideaki uses to describe how Hayashi problematizes the "stage" of her dramatic tanka: "As if drawing a picture, the poet versifies a nureba. Although it seems that the sexy image is the foreground, isn't the sex actually in the background? Hayashi hides the foreground from us. In her tanka, there is always some overtone of sadness that comes before the depicted poetic scene. We hear that sad sound from its near-concealment in the foreground."1
1Oketani Hideaki, "Kaisetsu" ("Commentary") in Hayashi Amari, MARS*ANGEL, (Kawade Bunko Bungei, 1993) 187.
Hayashi Amari (born 1963) is a contemporary Japanese tanka poet. She began her career with short poems of graphic sexual depictions, exploring female sexuality; she now works in a new vein, writing tanka about Christianity and the religious experience. She followed her debut collection Mars*Angel (1986) with Scent of Nanako (1988), an "accordion-format" hybrid book of her tanka and illustrations by Fukui Shin'ichi. These ten translations are selected from the author's own "best selection" from her self-edited anthology, Bedside 1986-2000. Hayashi has published other hybrid texts, such as the tanka-manga collection X-Rated Couple (1999; tanka adaptations of the comic book by Katsu Aki) and a tanka-illustration text Shortcut (1992; a collaboration with manga legend Hayashi Sei'ichi). She has also published essays and song lyrics for enka (Japanese blues) singers like Sakamoto Fuyumi.
Jon Holt is an assistant professor of Japanese at Portland State University. His research interests include modern Japanese poetry, Japanese Buddhism, and manga. Recent publications include: "Peaceful Warrior-Demons in Japan: from Empress Kōmyō's Red Repentant Asura to Miyazawa Kenji's Melancholic Blue Asura," Living in Peace: Insights from Buddhism (Blue Pine Books, 2013); "In a Senchimentaru Mood: Japanese Sentimentalism in Modern Poetry and Art," Japanese Language and Literature (2014); "Ticket to Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism in Miyazawa Kenji's 'Ginga tetsudō no yoru'," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2014). His translations of poems by Yamanoguchi Baku and Mabuni Chōshin will appear in the 2015 anthology Islands of Resistance: Contemporary Japanese Literature from Okinawa (University of Hawaii Press).
