JANINE BEICHMAN: MASAOKA SHIKI HIS LIFE AND WORKS Cheng & Tsui Company 25 West St Boston MA 02111-1213 USA ISBN 0 88727 364 5 JANINE BEICHMAN: EMBRACING THE FIREBIRD Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry University of Hawai'i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu HI 96822 USA ISBN 0 8248 2347 8 $23.95 visit the website of University of Hawai'i Press Web design by This page last updated: 11th December 2007. |
JANINE BEICHMAN: MASAOKA SHIKI HIS LIFE AND WORKS | |
Masaoka Shiki is known by Japanese critics as the father of the modern haiku. This book trys to put that image into the context of his life and his total writings. Shiki was only five when his alcoholic father died. His mother taught sewing to provide an income. Shiki came under the influence of his grandfather Kanzan who taught him literature, Confucian philosophy and samurai morality. As a pre-adolescent he was a devotee of poetry but later became politically-minded. In 1883 he left home to study in Tokyo. Two years later, he abandoned politics for philosophy. After failing his exams he turned to aesthetics and subsequently to literature. At first he aimed at becoming a novelist as that was a respected pursuit, whilst haiku was regarded with disdain. However, he soon decided that his aim in life would be to reform contemporary haiku and make it respectable. Shiki encouraged his students to compose haiku on topics derived from their own observation of nature, rather than on assigned topics. The author critically examines many of Shiki's haiku and his writing about haiku and about Basho and Buson in particular. She concludes it is certain that through his unique combination of intimacy and objectivity, artlessness and intensity, Shiki imbued the haiku with a new psychological complexity, and made it a poetic form that would survive into the modern period.In 1893 Shiki concerned himself with the tanka. In response to this own rhetorical question as to the kind of people who wrote contemporary tanka, he gave this list:
Haiku was considered vulgar and tanka refined, but Shiki saw it as natural that Japanese writers would work in both genres, just as many Europeans wrote not only poetry, but drama and novels as well. The author examines Shiki's tanka with the same attention to detail as she gave his haiku. Later chapters likewise discuss his prose writings and his diaries, especially their poetic content. The book concludes with extensive notes and a selected bibliography. For anyone with a thirst for but little knowledge of Shiki or the history of modern haiku and tanka, this book is an excellent place to start. | ||
reviewer: Gerald England | ||
JANINE BEICHMAN: EMBRACING THE FIREBIRD | ||
My poems are my diary, Yosano Akiko once said. Previous English translations of Akiko's work have presented her tanka with little or no commentary on her life. In EMBRACING THE FIREBIRD, scholar Janine Beichman weaves together memoirs, letters, and eyewitness accounts to offer a fuller and deeper portrait of Japan's most famous modern woman poet. This first book-length study details Akiko's artistic and emotional development from childhood to her early twenties when she was catapulted to fame with the publication of MIDAREGAMI (TANGLED HAIR). Akiko's bold and erotic poems shocked the Meiji world. Before the publication of TANGLED HAIR, poets did not mention-never mind praise-parts of the body, other than a woman's hair. Akiko revolted against this taboo by celebrating the ecstasy of sexual love. Pressing my breasts I softly kick aside the curtain of mystery How deep the crimson of the flower here. *** Spring is short what is there has eternal life I said and made his hands seek out my powerful breastsThe love poems in TANGLED HAIR were addressed to Tekkan, Akiko's lover and later husband. Tekkan was the leader of Japan's new poetry movement and published Akiko's tanka in his journal Myojo (Bright Star). Akiko broke all the rules of traditional tanka. Not only did she refuse to write on prescribed topics, but she rejected the strict 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic count. Her contemporaries had difficulty in understanding her grammatical peculiarities, fragmented syntax, and conception. We can appreciate, then, the daunting task of a translator who sets out to render Akiko's tanka into English. Ms. Beichman has offered us 270 poems, including 194 by Akiko, of which 122 are from TANGLED HAIR. In the final section of EMBRACING THE FIREBIRD, Ms. Beichman focuses on the variety, shape and originality of the poems in TANGLED HAIR. She shows us how Akiko infused her tanka with other genres and arts, such as Greek myth, Western painting (particularly the nudes of Titian), and Heian fiction. Gods and goddesses, cupids, nymphs, virgins and young priests enter her poems. This uncharacteristically playful one is written in the voice of a dove. Listen, poet! It's spring and what are these ragged letters you've scribbled on the underside of my pure white wingsHere Akiko is poking fun at Tekkan, who liked to inscribe his tanka on unusual surfaces. As in her definitive biography of haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, Ms. Beichman has included photographs with the text. It is fascinating to see the volatile, handsome Tekkan and the posed photo of Akiko with her friend/rival Tomiko. These photographs also serve as a visual reminder that Japan was at the cusp of a new era of Westernization: women still dressed in kimonos but men were beginning to sport mustaches and wear Western suits. The firebird (hi no tori) in the title refers to the mythological phoenix that is consumed by fire, then reborn from its own ashes. Like the firebird, Yosano Akiko emerged time and time again from poverty, rejection, betrayal, the travails of giving birth, motherhood and illness to embrace and renew her art. In this superb book, Ms. Beichman has indeed embraced the firebird. | ||
reviewer: Margaret Chula |