Volume 8 | Issue 5 | Number 3 | Article ID 3296 | Feb 01, 2010

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Yesterday Is Another World. Tanka by Yosano Akiko　　きのふを

ば千とせの前の世とも思ひ。与謝野晶子の短歌

Roger Pulvers, Yosano Akiko

Yesterday Is Another World 罪おほき男こらせと肌きよく黒髪ながくつくら

れし我れ
Tanka by Yosano Akiko

From “Disheveled Hair” みだれ髪

Her hair at twenty
Translations and Text by Roger Pulvers
Flowing long and black

Through the teeth of her comb

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), poet, educator, and
Oh beautiful spring
anti-war and social critic. “Dishevelled Hair”
was her first published collection of tanka Extravagant spring!
(1901).
その子二十櫛にながるる黒髪のおごりの春のう
つくしきかな

Two stars deep into heaven

Whispering love Droplets fall from a young girl’s hair

Behind the nighttime curtain Congealing on grass

While down below, now, people lie Giving birth to a butterfly

Their hair in gentle disarray… In the country

夜の帳にささめき尽きし星の今を下界の人の鬢 Of spring
のほつれよ
わかき子が髪のしづくの草に凝りて蝶とうまれ
しここ春の國

Made to punish men for their sins

The smoothest skin The girl in a springtime window

The longest black hair... Calls to awaken a young priest

All that Barely a man

Is me! His sutras toppled

1
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

By her dangling sleeve The day lengthens...

うらわかき僧よびさます春の窓ふり袖ふれて經 I snap off wild roses

くづれきぬ
Grasp them, put them in my hair...

I am weary of waiting in the field

For you!

野茨をりて髪にもかざし手にもとり永き日野辺
に君まちわびぬ

And this poem too, about a girl waiting

impatiently for her lover, exposes her restless
ardor. The day is long but she snaps off wild
roses. The coincidence of nobara being “wild
rose” in English is a lucky one, considering the
nuances of “wild.”

Her loose hair entwined

Around a young branch

By the east wind...

And in the west a rainbow

So small, yet radiant!

とき髪を若枝にからむ風の西よ二尺に足らぬう
つくしき虹

Akiko

Akiko wrote many poems about the restrained

passions that overwhelm a young girl. After
she met the man who was to become her
husband, the poet Yosano Tekkan, these
passions became more mature in expression,
deeper, more concretely erotic. They naturally
began as adolescent fantasies. But there is no
question as to the power of these young
fantasies: They are able to make the defenses
of an acolyte crumble.

Akiko and Tekkan

2
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

Another poem about a young girl, her hair now My thick thick black hair
taken by the wind and entwined around a
young branch (a very erotic image). This is the My wild hair
spring wind that blows from east to west. It is
almost telling her--commanding her--to look to Its thousand strands my heart
the west, where she sees a tiny but beautiful
Dishevelled, torn apart
rainbow. (Ni-shaku is the length of the sleeve
of a kimono...the sleeve that hangs through the くろ髪の千すぢの髪のみだれ髪かつおもひみだ
window of a room in which a young man is れおもひみだるる
sleeping, perhaps dreaming of her....)
Here her hair is a metaphor of her dishevelled
A great deal has been written about Yosano state. This poem, like so many others, contains
Akiko’s life and poetry. In going through the a most beautiful flow of sounds. It is almost as
myriad details of her dramatic life that spanned if the last 15 hiragana letters, virtually half the
the late-Meiji, Taisho and early-Showa eras, poem, are also flowing.
one most amazing fact stands out, to my mind,
above all others: Yosano Akiko had 13 children
(11 of whom survived childhood). This means
that she was pregnant for about a decade of My blood burns
her adult life. Think alone of the amount of
bleached cotton cloth (sarashi) under her To give you one night
kimono that she would have had to wash!
In the shelter of heightened dreams
Can you imagine her having the time to
God, do not look down on one
produce her vast output of poems and prose
and letters, give birth to and look after her Who passes through spring
children--admittedly with help from relatives
and helpers--and cater to the many and 血ぞもゆるかさむひと夜の夢のやど春を行く人
complex whims of her husband, whose fame as 神おとしめな
a poet was eclipsed by hers?
The words in the middle of this poem are
among the most beautiful of any that she
created. They make one feel as if one were
I whisper to you, “Stay in bed” reading Heian poetry in a more modern form.
In fact, for me this is one of the greatest
As I tenderly shake you awake modern tanka ever written. And what other
modern female poet, in any country, expressed
My dishevelled hair now
her passions so openly? Not even Anna
Akhmatova, her Russian contemporary, who is
Up in a Butterfly...
credited with giving a voice to women, is as
Kyoto morning! frank or as bold or as starkly erotic.

みだれ髪を京の島田にかへし朝ふしていませの Had Yosano Akiko been writing in English or

君ゆりおこす French or German, for instance, her influence
on 20th-century poetry around the world would
have been immense.

My black hair

3
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

How beautiful they are

The people brushing past me Tomorrow this time tomorrow

As I stroll through Gion You will not be with me...

To the Temple of Kiyomizu I lean against the inn door, faint

On this cherry blossom moonlit night! As the plum blossoms darken

清水へ祇園をよぎる桜月夜こよひ逢ふ人みなう Before my eyes

つくしき
明日を思ひ明日の今おもひ宿の戸に倚る子やよ
わき梅暮れそめぬ

We leaned against the railing

That runs along the bright bank Let me wind my slender arm

Of the wide Oi River at night Around your neck

Dressed in light blue Let me suck the fever

In our very own summer! From your parched lips

明くる夜の河はばひろき嵯峨の欄きぬ水色の二 Let me....

人の夏よ
病みませるうなじに繊きかひな捲きて熱にかは
Having lived myself in Kyoto for 15 years, I ける御口を吸はむ
have a particular fondness for her poems that
are located there. Akiko, of course, was born in
Sakai. She is a Kansai poet with a Kansai
You lured me to you, then
sensibility. What does this mean? A sensitivity
and sentimentality that are very focused, Brushing my hand aside
pointed, clearly defined...not like Kafu’s, that is
often wet, vaguely whining and reeking of Left...
trumped-up nostalgia...or Kawabata’s
sensibility that is often artificially heightened. Your holy robe’s scent
(Kawabata, of course, was not a Kyoto native.
And his novel set in Kyoto, Koto (古都), is Caught in a gentle good night
touristic; a kind of modern fairytale. Its
portrait of both the Kitayama district and of さそひ入れてさらばと我手はらひます御衣のに
ほひ闇やはらかき
Gion may just as well have been written by a
foreigner.) By contrast, Akiko’s sentimentality
is photographic. It captures a reality that we
can recognize even today, especially in the few You spout your words of wisdom
parts of Kyoto that have remained largely
unchanged in the last 100 years. While the current of my blood runs

4
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

Hot beneath my soft skin... Akiko loved European painting, especially the
work of Titian. In “My skin is so soft” is she
Don’t you miss picturing herself, just out of her bath, in a
Renaissance painting?
Touching it!?

やは肌のあつき血汐にふれも見でさびしからず
や道を説く君 A firefly slips off

The dangling sleeve

I press my breasts Of my light summer kimono

Gently parting Taken by the wind, drifting away

The shroud of mystery Into this blue night

Revealing the flower うすものの二尺のたもとすべりおちて蛍ながる

る夜風の青き
Redder than red

乳ぶさおさへ神秘のとばりそとけりぬここなる
花の紅ぞ濃き Your love for me

“I press my breasts” is one of her most famous, My love for you

and most erotic tanka. With Akiko’s poetry the
associations are complex and varied: Heian Love indistinguishable
poetry; haiku (particularly Buson and other
classical haiku poets); tanka written by Tekkan Whether you are the white bush clover...
and other contemporaries; the elements, such
as the wind, the sun; and parts of the clothing Whether I am the white lily....
or body. It is astounding how so many of these
elements are integrated in so few words. I おもひおもふ今のこころに分ち分かず君やしら
萩われやしら百合
know of no other poet in Japanese who does
this so naturally. “Your love for me” was actually written to her
best friend, the poet Yamakawa Tomiko, who,
like Akiko, was in love with Tekkan and had
My skin is so soft hoped to marry him. Their love for the same
man and their poetic aspirations created a
Fresh from my bath unique bond between them, intensely erotic
without being sexual.
It pains me to see it touched

Covered by the fabric

“Spring doesn’t last,” I said to him...
Of an everyday world
“You don’t believe in permanence, do you?”
ゆあみして泉を出でしやははだにふるるはつら
き人の世のきぬ And I took his hands in mine

5
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

Leading them But that blood is too dry now

To my young full breasts For my mouth

春みじかし何に不滅の命ぞとちからある乳を手 もゆる口になにを含まむぬれといひし人のをゆ
にさぐらせぬ びの血は涸れはてぬ

Yesterday is another world I am extremely grateful to Kyoko Selden for her

valuable comments and suggestions on these
A thousand years away... translations.

Yet it rushes to me

This minute!
Roger Pulvers, author, playwright and director,
With your hand on my shoulder... is a Japan Focus associate. In February 2009,
he was awarded the Crystal Simorgh Prize for
きのふをば千とせの前の世とも思ひ御手なほ肩 Best Script for "Ashita e no Yuigon (Best
に有りとも思ふ Wishes for Tomorrow)" at the Teheran
International Film Festival. He is the author
and translator of Miyazawa Kenji, Strong in the
Rain: selected poems among many other books.
Finally, a poem in answer to one by Tekkan, He wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific
who wanted her to apply his blood to her lips as Journal.
lipstick.

What will come into my burning lips?

Recommended citation: Yosano Akiko and
You answer... Roger Pulvers, "Yesterday Is Another World,"
The Asia-Pacific Journal, 5-3-10, February 1,
“The blood from my little finger.” 2010.

6
 8|5|3
APJ | JF

Click on the cover to order.