Author: Yuri Kageyama
Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — Shuntaro Tanikawa once thought poetry was inspiration from the sky. As he got older—he is now 9—Tanigawa believes that poetry emerges from the ground.
When he woke up in the morning, the poem would still be in front of him, a word or a fragment of a few lines. The inspiration for these words came from outside. Poetry comes from the depths of the heart.
“Writing poetry has become so much fun lately,” he said recently from his elegant home on the outskirts of Tokyo.
The shelves are full of books. His collection of ancient bronze animal figurines is neatly arranged in a glass case, next to a stack of his favorite classical music CDs.
“In the past, it was a job, and there was a certain meaning to being commissioned. Now, I can write as much as I want,” he said.
Tanigawa is one of Japan’s most famous modern poets and a master of free poetry in everyday life.
He has published more than one hundred collections of poetry. With titles such as “Alive,” “Listen,” and “Grass,” his poetry is straightforward, fast-paced but conversational, defying the refined traditional literary style.
William Elliot, who has translated Tanigawa over the years, likens his place in the history of Japanese poetry to how TS Eliot marked the beginning of a new era in English poetry.
Tanikawa is also a renowned translator, translating Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip into Japanese since the 1970s. He demonstrates his ear for poetry with skill in spoken language, choosing “yare yare” as “good sadness”, transcending the differences of Eastern and Western lifestyles in the universal world of children and animals.
“He was more of a poet or a philosopher,” he said of Schultz.
Tanigawa has translated the work of many others, including Mother Goose, Maurice Sendak and Leo Leoni. In turn, his work has been widely translated, including Chinese and European languages.
Tanigawa’s poem “Two Billion Light Years of Solitude” catapulted him to stardom in the early 1950s. Before Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote his magical realist classic, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Tanigawa looked at the universe and Earth’s place in it.
Always popular, Tanigawa is a darling of poetry readings around the world, a rare poet who effortlessly crosses over to commercialism without compromising his art.
But poetry was once a job—his vocation, his day job.
Tanigawa is the lyricist of the Japanese theme song for Osamu Tezuka’s TV anime series “Astro Boy”. He also wrote the script for Kon Ichikawa’s documentary about the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
He is a popular author of children’s picture books, often appearing in textbooks.
He swears he doesn’t have “projects” anymore because his age makes walking and going out more difficult. But at the same time, he said he is working with musician son Kensaku Tanikawa, who lives next door, on what they call “piano Twitter.”
He has written dozens of poems to accompany the score. They are all short, more abstract than his past works, and conjure up surreal imagery, such as stairs descending to nowhere, or caterpillars dancing uncontrollably.
He’s not sure how the work will be presented, but speculates that it could be turned into a book with a barcode so readers can listen to the poem online alongside the music.
Of his vast body of work, he is most proud of his 1970s “Kotoba Asobi Uta” series, which used single alliteration and onomatopoeia, as the title of “Word Play Songs” suggests .
Someone repeats the phrase “kappa”, a mythical monster, as in: “kappa kapparatta”, which translates as “kappa takes off with something” – a “rappa”, a “horn”, which results in the following line Appearance. The poem is a pure celebration of the Japanese language both visually and aurally.
It’s unique, Tanigawa said, and he still likes his idea.
“For me, Japanese is the foundation. Just like a plant, I take root, absorb the nourishment of Japanese, and germinate and bear fruit,” he said.
Married and divorced three times – poet, actress and illustrator – Tanigawa emphasizes that he changes with age, noting that a 90-year-old feels much older than an 80-year-old, and that he is increasingly forgetful.
However, he appeared on a recent sunny afternoon, completely satisfied with social media and everyday technology, although he used a magnifying glass to make out fine print. He’s curious about new movies, including those on Netflix. He liked cookies, he said, and looked more like a naughty kid than his great-grandfather.
He usually works at a huge desk in a spacious study with a window that lets in the breeze and dim light. It looked out to a yard full of flowers. On the wall hangs a sepia portrait of his mother and his father, the philosopher Tetsuzo Tanigawa.
Growing up, Tanigawa was more afraid of his mother’s death than any other death. He also remembers how he saw corpses on bodies after the U.S. air raid on Tokyo during World War II.
“Death has become more real. When I was younger, it used to be more conceptual. But now my body is approaching death,” he said.
He wanted to die like his father and died in his sleep at the age of 94 after a night of partying.
“I’m more curious about where I’m going when I die. It’s a different world, right? Of course, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die after major surgery or anything. I just want to die, all of a sudden,” he said. Say.
When asked to read his work aloud, he did not hesitate.
He read excerpts from his recent collaboration with his son. Then he read his debut novel, translated into English, and ended with the following lines:
“The universe is twisted, / that’s why we’re trying to connect. / The universe keeps expanding, / that’s why we’re all scared. / In 2 billion light-years of solitude / I suddenly sneezed.”
So what did he think?
“It felt like a poem someone else wrote,” Tanigawa said.
But is it a good poem?
He nodded firmly.
