The Early Poems of Ryuichi Tamura

16 mei 2007 Whenever I read his poetry I find myself recalling my meetings with him. His manners were casual yet reserved; his jokes ranged from what borders on indecency to what is lofty and philosophical. He was clever with multilingual and cross-cultural puns. His use of words was always precise and economical. His often witty and jovial remarks were declaratory and full of similes. Silences between his utterances served to reinforce what he said. During such a silence his piercing eyes looked straight at mine, in a way not common in Japan, as if to measure the depth of communication, or maybe to gauge the degree of misunderstanding. Words do not necessarily deliver what the speaker intends, and Mr Tamura was always keenly conscious of that painful reality.

His poetry is a precise crystallization of his inner thoughts through the seemingly ordinary images surrounding his life. His highly pared and polished lines invite us into his inner world. He communicates his intense fears, the growing darkness he feels, and his urgent desire to be released from both. Paradoxically he seeks to reach a conceptual height, the world with no words, through poetry.

What were his fears? What was the darkness he felt? What was the release he envisioned? His poetry lets us share Mr Tamura’s inner experiences so we can provide our own answers to these questions. I find an additional insight into his poetry in the autobiographical notes Mr Tamura wrote for Poems of Ryuichi Tamura, Vol. 1, A Library of Contemporary Japanese Poetry, Shichosha, Tokyo, 1968. It is titled “Counting from 10.” The following is an abbreviated translation.



Counting from 10

1923
I was born in Otsuka, Tokyo, the day before the Spring solstice, March 18, 1923 . . . My grandfather was one of the founders of the Otsuka association of restaurateurs, pleasure house owners and geisha house owners . . . I went through a series of serious illnesses from babyhood through 10 years of age. I was told that I almost died a few times. Six months after I was born, the great Kanto earthquake devastated the region.

1929~35
I entered elementary school, a branch school at the outskirts of the world of the geisha. On every anniversary of the founding of the school, our schoolmaster, who looked like a badger, would tell us how a pigsty came to be converted into our school house. My classmates were children of restaurateurs, geisha house owners, or families in associated businesses such as hairdressers, gilding craftsmen, or rickshaw men. Back then there were plenty of empty lots around, and I formed a baseball team with some kids from the eel dealers’ households. I was quite healthy by then, and from around 10 years of age, I was deeply into baseball.

1935~40
I entered a public high school. For the first time I was freed from the self-contained world of the geisha. I would take a city tram from Otsuka, change to another tram at Gofukubashi, and get off at Fukagawa-Fudosan. From there I would cross about 7 bridges in the Fukagawa area and go across a desolate landfill to reach my school. This little trip of one hour and a half produced a strange elation in me. Among my classmates were Taro Kitamura [a poet] and Shozo Kashima, now a scholar of American Literature. Classes in commerce and business were my weakest. I had no idea about Commercial Bookkeeping, Industrial Bookkeeping, Commercial English, English typing, Abacus, Business, etc. I was absolutely bored. In my junior or senior year, through Taro Kitamura’s introduction, I joined a coterie poetry magazine “Le Bal” edited by Masao Nakagiri. Also around that time I joined “Shin-Ryodo [The New Territory],” which was jointly edited by Yukuo Haruyama, Shiro Murano, Tamotsu Ueda, and Azuma Kondo. By virtue of joining “Le Bal” I got to know some poets who were 3 or 4 years older than I and already college students. They were from the lower middle class. They were Nobuo Ayukawa, Shin Kisaragi, Toyoichiro Miyoshi, . . . Given the stirring elation I gained from just a 1.5 hour tram trip from the third-rate world of the geisha, my readers can easily imagine how intellectually stimulated and excited I was by meeting these people, and by coming in contact with their conversations and discussions, their poetry and their essays. Everything was new to me, and everything made me curious. These poets were influenced mainly by European literature of post-WW I and the associated literary movements of the era. I honestly felt that I had discovered a horizon so far unknown. As I entered High School, the 2-26 (1936) incident [a failed military coup d’etat, which resulted in stronger military control over politics in Japan] took place. Then the China Incident. Japan’s military activities kept expanding to finally involve the whole of China, and World War II started in Europe. In 1940 I read ‘The Waste Land’ by T.S. Eliot in the English original for the first time. In 1938 I had read a part of ‘The Waste Land’ in a stiff Japanese translation in the August issue of “The New Territory.” . . .  As I read the original,

Summer surprised us, coming over Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain;

I discovered that what ‘surprised us’ was ‘Summer’ and learned some syntax that was unavailable in the Japanese language . . . .

I published a considerable number of my poems (?) in “Le Bal” and in “The New Territory” but they were still etudes, and I was not yet serious about writing poetry. Annihilating the Japanese mode of literary expression as well as Japanese lyricism and logic gave me elemental, visceral pleasures. I was not after intellectual satisfaction. I was not at all interested in the traditional Japanese cadences of 5 and 7 syllables, or the work of poets of the preceding generation such as Sakutaro Hagiwara or Kotaro Takamura. In that sense, I was different from other literary-minded youths . . . What drove me to ‘poetry’ then  . . . may have been simply my urgent desire to get away from what ‘Otsuka’ represented, namely a closed and anachronistic world characterized by selling the cheap pleasures of the late Edo period. Accordingly, what generated a curiosity and thirst for ‘poetry’ in me had to be ‘poetry’ by the “intellectual poets” of our generation and of our times . . . I had a deep-seated loathing for ‘Otsuka,’ and a kind of attachment to it as well, producing a furious ambivalence in me, which was transferred to Japan where war efforts were ever escalating. In this sense ‘Otsuka’ and ‘Japan’ were often synonymous to me.

1941~45
In March of 1940, I graduated from High School. I cancelled my already-decided employment with Tokyo Gas, and decided to go to college . . . my motive for going to college was to dodge the military draft  . . .  In 1941 I was admitted to the School of Literature at Meiji University. The entrance exams and interviews were formalities, because the department did not have enough applicants to fill its rolls . . . I received deferment. (Oh, that was more than enough!) On December 8th of that year, the Pacific War broke. “Deaths” clearly showed themselves in front of my eyes . . .  There was extreme control over speeches and goods. I stopped writing poetry . . .  On December 19th of 1943, I was drafted and stationed in the Marine base in Yokohama . . .  in 1945 I was assigned to an Army unit to defend the Maizuru area [on the Japan Sea]. The Japan Sea in July and August of that year was truly glorious and I was always swimming in it. On August 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered.

Postwar Era
In September 1945, I was released from the military. I got off a train at Sugamo, with a raincoat thrown over my shoulders. I saw a vast spread of burnt land. In front of me stood the burnt shell of a department store in Shinjuku. I walked slowly to Otsuka. I stood at the plot where my house used to be, and looked around. There was nobody around, even though it was the middle of the day. On that day, a southerly wind, driven by a typhoon, was blowing hard across the burnt town shining under the September Sun.

1947
I started a monthly poetry magazine “The Waste Land” in April, which continued through six issues . . . From 1951 till ‘58, I published an annual poetry collection Waste Land Poetry.

1956
I published Four Thousand Days and Nights, a collection of my work from the 10 years following WWII. The genesis of this book was a prose poem, titled ‘Etching’.

He sees, in front of him, a landscape like one he saw in a German etching. It seems like a bird’s-eye view of an ancient city, which is about to shift from evening into night, or like a realistic picture representing a modern precipice that is changing from deep night into daybreak.

He, namely the man I have begun to tell you about, killed his father when he was young. That autumn his mother went beautifully mad.

This poem was the genesis of my first book of poetry, and at the same time, I can say that I discovered my poetry through this poem. My subsequent books of poetry would tell you how the ‘he’ who appears in this poem and ‘I’ would fare. Why did the third-person ‘he’ appear? I probably needed a pair of eyes other than my own.

1962
I published a book of poetry, The World with No Words. This book contains my experience in living in the mountains in Gunma Prefecture for three years. Above all, my life there in winter opened my eyes to what Nature is. In this sense ‘An Invisible Tree’ is the genesis of this book.

I found footmarks in the snow
When I saw them
I witnessed, for the first time,
a world ruled by
small animals, little birds and beasts in the woods

1966
I collected my entire work from the 20 years after WWII, and published Collected Poems of Ryuichi Tamura. “A Study of Fear” would probably be a theme for my life . . . .

1967
I published a book of poems A Green Thought. I borrowed the title from a line by Andrew Marvell:

Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

I cannot yet see the Post WWII Era clearly. In order to be able to define ‘him’ and ‘me’ more clearly, we probably need much more time and deeper thinking. So I cannot yet pen an autobiography. In the meantime, for over 20 years, I have been waiting for the moment when ‘He’ and ‘I’ would fuse together. Recently I have not dreamed of Otsuka. I am now in the Fall of the 44th year of my life.


Mr Tamura’s notes help us see the making of a poet who has a razor-sharp self-awareness and exceptional clarity of vision.

Throughout his formative years he witnessed destruction and devastation. The great Kanto earthquake, which occurred when he was six months old, destroyed the greater Tokyo region, and his elementary school master reminded him of that every year. In his teenage years he saw military and totalitarian forces take hold, plunging the country into a ruinous war, which stifled his creativity. Finally at the end of WWII, as he was freed from the ‘cage’ he was in, he stood alone facing the total annihilation of the city of Tokyo and his home. It is no wonder that his mind was filled with death, and with screams no one seemed to respond to. But this mindscape is the source of his creativity.

By his own account, ‘Etching’ marks a defining moment in Mr Tamura’s development as a poet. Its first passage gives us the cityscape he faced, recalling one he saw in a German etching. In the second passage he tells us of his resolute rejection of his father. He buries what his father represents, namely, his hometown ‘Otsuka’ and its outmoded mores. He also tells us of his mother’s condition, perhaps signifying a crazed post-WWII motherland. What is notable here is that a possible transition to dawn is suggested and that his mother’s madness is perceived as ‘beautiful’. Mr Tamura has not given up all hope of renewal. He starts running to find a way out of the mind-corroding desolation, taking his alter ego with him.

Along the way, Mr Tamura finds some answers in Nature. In his notes Mr Tamura calls ‘An Invisible Tree’ the genesis of his next book The World with No Words. This poem tells us what he discovers in Nature: rhythms that are sure and affirmative, forms that are simple and carefree, and an existence that is shaped by some awesome presence. But these are attributes of Nature where words are not called for. Yet, being a poet, Mr Tamura will have to use words to reach the world he seeks, “the world with no words” or “the world of poetry at noon”. His pursuit is intense. His journey requires him to stay balanced on a thin line between hope and desperation. We see him doing so in ‘The Thin Line’ (published in the 1950’s). Much later (in the 1970’s) in ‘The Thin Line, Again’ he asks himself, “Did my feet/step off the thin line?” We feel his pain throughout his intense and persistent journey. His question makes us recall Dryden’s lines:

Great wits are sure to madness near alli’d
And thin partitions do their bounds divide
[Dryden; Absalom and Achitophel I]

I can imagine a tall thin poet balancing himself on the paper thin partition between “great wits and madness.” And I can safely say that he did step off the line, decidedly to the side of “great wits”.