“Aomori Elegy I”—Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933)

Miyazawa wrote several versions of “Aomori Elegy” (青森挽歌 Aomori banka), of which this is the best-known. I did a translation of another version almost a decade ago, as part of my final for an upper-level undergraduate course called Readings in Modern Japanese II. That translation can be found here. Translating this version has been a longstanding personal goal of mine.

“Aomori Elegy” is a Modernist poem that in some versions has pronounced Buddhist themes; in all of its forms, it represents Miyazawa’s efforts to come to terms with the early death of his younger sister Toshiko. This version is probably the most explicitly Buddhist of the lot, although some of that might be lost on any reader accustomed to the “philosophy, not a religion” view of Buddhism, since Miyazawa’s Buddhism was expressly supernatural and intensely pietistic in character.

All versions are in the public domain in Japan, whose copyright regime is the lifetime of the author plus seventy years. This version is on Aozora Bunko, an excellent Japanese public domain online library somewhat along the lines of a Japanese Project Gutenberg, as part of Miyazawa’s Spring and the Asura (春と修羅 Haru to shura) collection. I’m electing to put this translation under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license. Anybody may copy, distribute, display, perform, and make derivative works and remixes based on this translation only if they attribute the translation to both Miyazawa Kenji and me. Anybody may distribute derivative works under a license not more restrictive than this license.

Aomori Elegy I

When the train passes through the fields on such a dark night as this,

The passengers’ windows all become the windows of an aquarium.

            (Like the ranks of dried telegraph poles

            That are passing swiftly by,

            The train races through a great hydrogen apple,

            The lambent lens of the galaxy.)

It runs through an apple,

But where on earth are we? What station is this?

There’s a fence made of torched railroad ties.

            (The silent agar of an August night.)

A single row of cross-barred poles

Is made up only of old familiar shadows

And two yellow lamps are lit.

The tall, pale stationmaster’s

Brass rod is nowhere to be seen,

And, in fact, he casts no shadow.

            (That entomology adjunct there

            In such fluid as fills this passenger car,

            Lusterless red hair aflutter,

            Is sleeping leaning on his luggage.)

My train is supposed to be northbound, but

It is running southward here.

The burnt fenceposts have fallen here and there,

The faroff horizon traced in yellow.

It muddles together—those stagnant beerlike dregs

Of heat haze on an ominous night,

The flickerings of lonely minds,

The Pale-Blue Station on the Pale-Blue River.

            (What a terrible pale-blue void!)

I can’t but soar up swiftly

From such a lonely fantasy

That the train’s switchback is at the same time a reciprocated desire.

Up there the roads are strewn with countless blue peacock feathers

And sleepy fatty acids of brass

And the five electric lights in the compartment

Liquefy at colder and colder temperatures.

            (Because it hurts, and because I am exhausted,

            I try not to remember

            Things I cannot but think about.)

Today, around noon,

Under the light-scorched clouds,

I swear, we congregated and pawed idiotically

Around that heavy red pump.

I commanded us, dressed in yellow.

So I can’t help but be exhausted.

             (O! du, eiliger Geselle,

             Eile doch nicht von der Stelle

             (A German first-grader)

             Who is it suddenly crying out

             So wickedly?

             But surely it is just that first-grader.

             Opening his eyes so wide

             Now, in the wee hours,

             Is that German first-grader.)

Did she pass through such a lonely station

Alone, and continue her journey?

In some direction that nobody knows,

Along an unknown path, to what kind of world

Did she take that lonely walk?

            (There are grasses and marshes.

            There is a single tree.)

            ((Giru-chan was sitting with a ghastly pale face.))

            ((Her eyes were wide open, but

            She didn’t seem to be seeing us.))

　　　　((Oh, I dare say, she, eyes glaring red,

            Narrowed the circle like so.))

            ((Shh. Break the circle and give me your hand.))

            ((Giru-chan looked so pale you could see right through her.))

            ((Oh, so many birds, so many birds burst across the sky

            As at sowing-time

            But Giru-chan maintained her silence.))

            ((The sun was a strange, toffee-like color.))

            ((Giru-chan didn’t look at us even a little

            And I felt horrendous.))

            ((She ran too fast through May’s three-leafed arrowheads.))

            ((Why didn’t Giru-chan look at us?

             ((Did she forget even us her playmates?))

But if I have to think about it

Then I have to think about it.

Toshiko passed in that manner

That everyone calls death.

I don’t know where she went after that.

It can’t be measured in our customary spatial directions,

When we try to sense that insensate direction,

Everyone whirls around giddily.

            ((A tinnitic roar, and I can hear no more.))

Having said this so kindly

It was clear that she could not hear the old familiar voices

Of the people around her whom she could still plainly see.

Suddenly she stopped breathing and her pulse failed,

And afterwards, when I ran to her,

Her beautiful eyes

Roved in vain as if looking for something.

They could no longer see our space.

What could she sense after that?

Surely she still had visions of our world

And hallucinated that she could hear it

As I, right by her ear,

Brought to her voices from far places.

The sky, love, apples, wind, the joyful origin of all the powers—

When I screamed, at the top of my lungs,

The name of the living being to whom all things return,

She took two breaths like little nods,

Her pointed white chin and cheeks trembled,

Coincidentally, the same face she made

When she was a little girl and had done something goofy.

But she definitely nodded.

            ((Dr. Haeckel!

            I would be greatly honored if you entrusted me

            With the peerless task of proof, of verification.))

From within the clouds of the silicate siesta,

That cowardly scream, as if being frozen…

            ((The evening we crossed Soya Strait,

            I stood on the deck all night.

            My unhelmed head cauled in a devious mist,

            My body filled with corrupted wishes,

            And so I decided to be truly defiant.))

Certainly she did nod.

And since, until the next morning,

Her chest remained warm,

After we cried out that she had died,

Toshiko could still sense the shape of this world.

And in that faint sleep, away from mania and pain,

She may have dreamed the way she dreamed here,

And I can’t help but feel that those serene dream-visions

That lead on to the next world

Might have been shining and fragrant.

You have no idea how much I wish that.

In fact, a piece of that dream

Drifted into that sunrise

Where Shigeko, among others,

Dozed exhausted from solicitude and sorrow.

             ((I’ll bring yellow flowers too…))

Surely Toshiko, in that daybreak,

Still within dreaming distance of this world,

Walked alone in an open field

Strewn with windblown leaves. As she so did,

Muttering as if she were someone else,

Going likewise into a lonely wood,

Did she turn into a bird?

Listening to l’estudiantina in the wind

In a dark grove of running waters

Did she fly off singing sadly?

And then, before long, did she wander aimlessly

With new friends who sang innocent songs

And sounded like little propellers

As they flew?

            No. I don’t think so.

Why isn’t some communication allowed?

It is allowed. The communication I got

Is the same as what our mother dreamed, caring for her on summer nights.

Why don’t I think that’s the case? It manifestly is.

Her dreams of the human world fading,

She senses a sky of rose-colored dawn,

Senses with her fresh new senses,

Senses smoke-like gossamers in the sunlight,

Glimmering, with a faint smile,

Passing the poles of light that crisscross

The glittering clouds and the frozen aromas,

Going that mysterious direction we call Upward.

Amazed that that is what it is,

She climbed, faster than Coriolis winds.

I can even trace those tracks.

There, looking out over a tranquil blue lake-surface,

Too smooth and too bright,

Seeming in some way to reflect absolutely everything,

A treeline shaken by sorrowful light…

I found such accurate transmission suspect,

And in time I became able to see,

In trembling joy, that it was the lapis lazuli surface of Heaven.

The music of the sky, flowing like ribbons,

Or like necklace pendants, or like dubious gossamer,

The living creatures with big feet,

Which aren’t going to leave, but do come and go,

The scent that flowers have in far-off memories—

Did she stand calmly amidst all this?

Or, after not hearing our voices,

A deep, bad, empty, dark-red cave,

Voices like sentient proteins being crushed,

The stench of sulfuric acid and laughing gas—

If she saw those in that place,

She would stand amidst them, pale with horror,

Not knowing if she was standing or staggering,

Hands on her cheeks, as if the dream itself were what was standing.

(Is it really true

That I feel this way these days?

Is it really possible

For such a one as I to see such things?

And yet I really am seeing.) thus

She might be brooding to herself…

These lonesome thoughts of mine

Come to everyone at night.

When day breaks and we reach the coast

And the waves are awash in sparkling light

Maybe everything will be all right.

But Toriko having died

Is no longer something I can think of as a dream

But a cruel reality,

Thinking on which I feel uneasy anew.

When sensing something is too raw,

Conceptualizing it instead

Can stop one from going mad.

It is certainly one of the defense mechanisms we the living have,

But one should not expect it to work forever.

After all, since she’s lost this world’s sense faculties,

What kind of body did she get?

And with what kind of sense faculties does she feel?

How often I think about this!

After so many experiments conducted once upon a time,

The Abhidharma tells us (see above)

“Don’t try this a second time.”

Ahead, monads of nephrite and silver

Are filled with gases emitted from the half moon.

The moonbeams permeate

The guts of the cirrocumulus,

Form a strange fluorescent screen,

Emanate more and more a bizarre scent of apples,

And seamlessly pass even through the cold windowpanes.

It is not just because this is Aomori;

Something like this tends to happen when the dawn moon

Enters the cirrocumulus…

            ((Oi, oi, that face of hers went pale))

Shut the fuck up!

Whether my dead little sister’s face

Went pale or went dark,

How can you speak of it?

Wherever she’s fallen

She already belongs to unexcelled enlightenment.

Whosoever advances there, full of strength,

Can bravely leap into any dimension.

Soon the steel of the east will shine.

In fact, today…or maybe yesterday, around noon,

At that heavy red pump, we…

            ((Listen up once more, please.

            Uh, actually,

            Her eyes then were white

            And didn’t want to shut right away.))

Do you ever shut up?

Soon, when the night’s egress opens,

Everything that is what it is,

Everything that sparkles how it sparkles,

Your weapons, and everything else of yours that isn’t a weapon,

All of which terrify you,

Will be shown in truth to be joyous and bright.

            ((Since from the beginning we are all siblings,

            You must never pray only for one.))

Oh, I have never done that.

Day and night, since she went away,

I do not think that even once

I have prayed that her, and only her,

Going to the good place would be enough.