This poem is taken from the collection Human Tragedy, which includes, according to Kaneko, many of the poems he wrote from the time of the China Incident in 1937, when Japan’s war against China took a serious turn, until ten days before Japan’s defeat in 1945. They were anti-war poems, but Kaneko managed to publish many of them with the “conspiratorial collaboration” of the famed editor of the monthly Chuhoh Kohron, Hatanaka Shigeo. ‘The Song of Loneliness’ is the last poem in the collection, and consists of four sections. The poem is based on Kaneko’s perception that every aspect of what makes the Japanese Japanese – the land, society, behaviour, customs, psychology, clothing – is a manifestation of sabishisa, ‘loneliness’. At one point in the poem, he asserts: “I was born / out of the deep fog of this land, which is covered with loneliness,” and, later, “In this country, / only loneliness is always fresh.” The final section of the poem is translated here. (1) A allusion to the Bible, Luke, 7:24: “What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind?” In 1906, when he was eleven, Kaneko became a catechumen. He wrote a number of poems with biblical allusions. (2) In Japanese tradition, becoming a soldier was equated with readiness to die, if not to outright death. See Hiroaki Sato’s online article, “Gyokusai or ‘Shattering like a Jewel’: Reflection on the Pacific War” at http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2662. (3) In Japanese folklore, a deity wanting a human sacrifice (usually a pretty, young woman) shoots an arrow with white feathers into the roof of the house where she lives. Here it represents a draft notice. (4) When a young man received a draft notice, his family would turn it into a celebratory occasion, throwing a party for friends and relatives, before sending their son off with the word “Banzai!” (5) A national holiday in Japan. Originally Chinese. Girls’ Day, also originally Chinese, occurs on March 3.