Last week arrived my copy of わたしはわたし自身を生きる, the compilation of prison writings by Kaneko Fumiko [金子 文子] (1903-1926), the young and tormented nihilist of a Japan way behind her thirst for freedom, justice and peace. This particular volume includes her autobiography 何が私をこうさせたか [What made me do what I did], the complete transcripts of her questioning at the hands of the military police and, the whole reason for picking it up, the poems she wrote those years in jail, before her apparent suicide at only 23 years old. Having read her autobiography years ago, and gotten only sneak peaks online at her poetic production, I was certainly eager to get'em and begin the translating process (already under way). While scarce when compared with the rest of her written production (and 何が私をこうさせたか was in fact a colossal effort for a self-taught reader and writer imprisoned and demoralized; a consisting and compelling book of almost 300 pages), these free-verse attempts by Fumiko absolutely share her touch. Sharp and concise, romantic and cynical, forlorn and wishful, they express the almost abyssal sensibility she developed over years of abuse of many kinds. The strain and toll of these experiences shaped but not destroyed her enjoyment of all aspects of nature: of rain, of snow; of trees and animals, the innocent and the voiceless.
Born in Yokohama Prefecture [横浜市], Fumiko was born to a dysfunctional couple embroidered in poverty and unregistered as a marriage. Her father was not only abusive, lacked occupation and cheated with the sister of Fumiko's mother but also was deeply superstitious. In fact he followed a common belief among poor peasant families: Kaneko's name 金子 [child of gold, or riches] 文子 [alusive to either learning, magic or also money, since the mon 文 was the Edo currency] was supposed to bring about the material benefits by magical correlative thinking between word and thing. Since Mikiso Hane states this custom exploded with the Meiji transition (which nominally allowed class mobility for the first time since the Tokugawa period), the dates match, and her father's propension to augury and obscurantism makes it likely. Her mother was deeply co-dependent emotionally, and even though she worked various low income jobs, they eventually turned out to be exhausting for her. Living with the bare minimum, reduced to eating pitch-black burned rice at other's trash cans, Fumiko grew up and eventually was able to receive some education (a battle spanning her entire infancy, since she was an unregistered person, and thus invisible for all Japanese institutions). From then on, and after becoming more or less a vagabond in Tokyo (working as house servant, newspaper or powder soap peddler) she contacted various groups (from socialists to Salvation Army christians) and people who ended up becoming an urban resistance cell of shorts. Fundamental to her learning was Niiyama Hatsuyo [新山初代], one among the quite woman students, who befriended her and got her into philosophy and literature. People from all the walks of life such as journalists, rickshaw workers and Koreans were being influenced by revolutionary thought at the time, and among those groups Fumiko, along with Korean anarchist Pak Yeol [박열], formed the Malcontents' Society [不逞社]
I'd argue the only issue with this volume is the omission of the writings Fumiko made for 不逞社, which precede her arrest and jailing. Even though some are online, I can't find other explanation aside from these works being collective to some degree (with many hands writing, rectifying and printing the Society's material). But we know for a fact Fumiko was an active writer, not only due to her noticeable language but also due to the debrief transcripts, included here; there she is questioned on specific (and ''incendiary'') statements she admits as her own and keeps upholding. While some specific sections have been translated into English (noticeably by Helene Bowen Raddeker or Mikiso Hane), the vast bulk of them are Japanese only and thus I'm buying this. The volume is hefty, and plays with three different typos: the standard Japanese writing for her book, a two-column right-to-left newspaper style for the police transcripts, and the big bold typo you see above for her poetry; it also includes furigana, handy for some Taishō-era pronunciations.
These poems are valuable for in them Fumiko also expresses her tastes and distates, the readings she enjoyed, and things she only confessed to herself. They really flesh-up her life story, and also their deep humanness cuts like a sharp knife the temporal, historical and cultural distance which divides us. We come to know her favourite poet was Ishikawa Takuboku [石川 啄木] (1886-1912), who also died tragically young and composed brilliant, heartfelt poems which reinvented tanka (something Fumiko herself does here to a certain degree). And also that she took Walt Whitman's (1819-1892) poems while at prison; back then Whitman was strongly influencing modern Japanese poetry via a handful of innovative artists such as Takamura Kōtarō [高村 光太郎] (1883-1956). Whitman's and Emerson's transcendentalism powerfully suited the Japanese tradition of natural imaginery and pantheistic ''religiosity'', and also the fierce individualism of people such as Fumiko, eager for free-development and spontaneous thought, and action capable of washing away tradition, superstition, economic, moral and mental servitude. And Fumiko's poems are really close to those of all the high names listed here, proving herself a worthy student. Also, her language here differs a lot from that of her book. When she handed down her manuscript, she specifically asked the publisher to keep as much as possible the simple and bare style she used, so as to make it easily comprehensible to anybody who wanted to read it. Of course, we are talking Taishō-era ''simple'' here. But in these short poems Fumiko flies high, and proves she in fact had a talent for crafting delicate and beautiful compositions resonating with traditional poetry, embellished with some arcane kanji use. Her flexible tanka-like poetry has something of a free verse, and she writes about it among the first ones:
Recurring imaginery ranges from on one hand flowers and weather asocciated with the seasons of the year; on the other, loneliness, death and the ugliness of the human world. But also her down-to-earth, joking character comes forth most of the time. She also cleverly plays with poetic structure; as an example she writes of a young convict woman dressing herself with an obi by the window, getting ready for a court appearance; the poem mimicks the traditional Heian period trope referring to a young bride spotted while reading herself for her wedding. These brief flashes of light vividly contrast with her desperate descriptions of jail time, the oppresive atmosphere of people forced to lay and sleep from morning to dawn in complete solitude. She often writes about her dreams. Also she shares morbid reflections on how she will be executed or how she'd like to turn into a vengeful ghost. These powerful pathos, that of life and desire, and that of death and isolation, often come together in powerful poetic bursts such as this one:
At least in this compilation, her poems do not follow a concrete order; they list three sources (either independent compositions or occasions in which she passed them down) and the last one is no particularly definitive, as I have checked out. Also, some of them include the X tipography, indicating either unrecognisable characters or -way more likely- prison censorship. People are named rarely, and always with an initial such as B, A, or S (this exclude literary authors, of course). Unconventional and rather bold themes are also a sign of Fumiko's pen; nothing is made ''womanly'' but only as naked
truth. A few among of all these poems are purely biographical, and cannot be understood aside from her book; as both works come together in this volume there is no problem. Kaneko Fumiko's writings have, up to this point, only been analysed through the lens of ideology and rebellion. And that is only fair, considering the energy and passion Fumiko mustered in order to defy the entirety of her country and her historical moment; but she was a human being of flesh and sorrow. She could not avoid being political due to who she was; but the core of her being was something other than political: was fully personal. While I'm still working on translating all her poems, Fumiko herself gave me another reading list, as now I'm in need of a volume from Ishikawa Takuboku. Ain't it curious and magical, getting to-read lists from someone who died so long ago? And I'm complying.
I'd argue the only issue with this volume is the omission of the writings Fumiko made for 不逞社, which precede her arrest and jailing. Even though some are online, I can't find other explanation aside from these works being collective to some degree (with many hands writing, rectifying and printing the Society's material). But we know for a fact Fumiko was an active writer, not only due to her noticeable language but also due to the debrief transcripts, included here; there she is questioned on specific (and ''incendiary'') statements she admits as her own and keeps upholding. While some specific sections have been translated into English (noticeably by Helene Bowen Raddeker or Mikiso Hane), the vast bulk of them are Japanese only and thus I'm buying this. The volume is hefty, and plays with three different typos: the standard Japanese writing for her book, a two-column right-to-left newspaper style for the police transcripts, and the big bold typo you see above for her poetry; it also includes furigana, handy for some Taishō-era pronunciations.
These poems are valuable for in them Fumiko also expresses her tastes and distates, the readings she enjoyed, and things she only confessed to herself. They really flesh-up her life story, and also their deep humanness cuts like a sharp knife the temporal, historical and cultural distance which divides us. We come to know her favourite poet was Ishikawa Takuboku [石川 啄木] (1886-1912), who also died tragically young and composed brilliant, heartfelt poems which reinvented tanka (something Fumiko herself does here to a certain degree). And also that she took Walt Whitman's (1819-1892) poems while at prison; back then Whitman was strongly influencing modern Japanese poetry via a handful of innovative artists such as Takamura Kōtarō [高村 光太郎] (1883-1956). Whitman's and Emerson's transcendentalism powerfully suited the Japanese tradition of natural imaginery and pantheistic ''religiosity'', and also the fierce individualism of people such as Fumiko, eager for free-development and spontaneous thought, and action capable of washing away tradition, superstition, economic, moral and mental servitude. And Fumiko's poems are really close to those of all the high names listed here, proving herself a worthy student. Also, her language here differs a lot from that of her book. When she handed down her manuscript, she specifically asked the publisher to keep as much as possible the simple and bare style she used, so as to make it easily comprehensible to anybody who wanted to read it. Of course, we are talking Taishō-era ''simple'' here. But in these short poems Fumiko flies high, and proves she in fact had a talent for crafting delicate and beautiful compositions resonating with traditional poetry, embellished with some arcane kanji use. Her flexible tanka-like poetry has something of a free verse, and she writes about it among the first ones:
This chant of mine has no style, nor school; my chant is only mine
and bursts like a flame burning in my chest
Whenever I contemplate the human being I always feel myself burning with hatred;
and I always feel like crying at the same time
At least in this compilation, her poems do not follow a concrete order; they list three sources (either independent compositions or occasions in which she passed them down) and the last one is no particularly definitive, as I have checked out. Also, some of them include the X tipography, indicating either unrecognisable characters or -way more likely- prison censorship. People are named rarely, and always with an initial such as B, A, or S (this exclude literary authors, of course). Unconventional and rather bold themes are also a sign of Fumiko's pen; nothing is made ''womanly'' but only as naked
truth. A few among of all these poems are purely biographical, and cannot be understood aside from her book; as both works come together in this volume there is no problem. Kaneko Fumiko's writings have, up to this point, only been analysed through the lens of ideology and rebellion. And that is only fair, considering the energy and passion Fumiko mustered in order to defy the entirety of her country and her historical moment; but she was a human being of flesh and sorrow. She could not avoid being political due to who she was; but the core of her being was something other than political: was fully personal. While I'm still working on translating all her poems, Fumiko herself gave me another reading list, as now I'm in need of a volume from Ishikawa Takuboku. Ain't it curious and magical, getting to-read lists from someone who died so long ago? And I'm complying.
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