The Poems of Nakahara Chuya.
Throughout his poetry Nakahara Chuya interplays, in his own unconventional way, two underlying Japanese emotional characteristics; the need to understand moods of awaremi (pity) - an essential part of the Japanese kokoro (heart) - and humour. The Japanese have a number of terms to express humour, and Nakahara runs the gamut from kishitsu (humour of disposition) to kibun (humour of mood). Further Nakahara was always able to exploit the nuances of Japanese language which is so dependent on sound, expression and tone.Born into an upper-middle-class family of strong literary interests, in the Year of the Sheep and the thirty-ninth year (1907) of the reign of the Emperor Meiji - the imperial sovereign who yanked Japan out of its feudal statehood into being a modan-na (modern) society - Nakahara Chuya has been classed as an 'early modern poet'. By nature and practice he was a dissipated devotee of picturesque bohemianism and has been likened to the French poets of the turn of the century for whom he developed a fondness.
Nakahara loathed party politics, hated society and had an aversion to full time employment. He was introduced into Catholicism by his foster-grandparents and was much influenced by the Christian environment of his birthplace of Yuda (Yamaguchi City), a centre of the faith introduced to Japan in 1549 after the visit of St Francis Xavier. In his lifetime, though, Nakahara received little attention from the country's literati, and only one collection of his poems was published before his death in 1937. His perceived worth as a poet of the modern age only began to grow during the American Occupation of Japan following World War II.
Nakahara had begun to write tanka (short poems of thirty-one syllables) at an early age and contributed them to local newspapers, magazines and school publications. He was influenced early too by Dadaist themes (without the socialist slant), and thereafter his poetry reflected a personalised language sound-pattern and an eccentric imagery. He mixed too with fellow poets much taken with French Symbolist verses.
Leaving school without formal certification, Nakahara entered the world of a new genre of Japanese poetry known as shi, a free style full of colloquialisms. His first poem of subtance was Asa no Uta (Morning Song) of 1926, a fourteen-line (pseudo-sonnet in 5-7 syllable metre) in shi style; it is full of clues to Nakahara's true style with its pensive remorse for human emotions and the developing surrealism of his own emotions. He dabbled too with verses as song lyrics.
By 1929 a coterie of friends joined Nakahara for the founding of the shortlived magazine Hakuchigun (suggesting a gathering of fools, in meaning). This and many other literary magazines floundered in the rise of strident militarism in the Japan of the 1920s and 1930s, but Nakahara continued to be published and he edited his first collection as Yagi no Uta (Goats Songs) in 1932; it was published in 1934. The work contained a broad range of his work in forty-four poems of the period 1924-30.
This collection was devised to introduce Nakahara to an English-speaking audience, but its translated verses lose the syllable nuances of his poetry which showed him to be a master of his native language and its sounds. But the selection does show his subtle imagery. Nakahara was a great exponent of Japanese nostalgia, nature and novelty, and he knew well the tortuous ramifications of the Japanese soul. The main choice for the poems herein has been Nakahara's Arishi Hi no Uta (Songs of Past Days) published a year after his death.
RAYMOND LAMONT-BROWN
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| Author: | Lamont-Brown, Raymond |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Contemporary Review |
| Date: | Jan 1, 1995 |
| Words: | 589 |
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