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A Reading of Kenji Miyazawa's "Okhotsk Elegy"

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A Reading of Kenji Miyazawa's Portland State University PDXScholar World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations World Languages and Literatures 2016 Discovering the Lotus on This Shore: A Reading of Kenji Miyazawa's "Okhotsk Elegy" Jon P. Holt Portland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/wll_fac Part of the Japanese Studies Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Holt, Jon. "Discovering the Lotus on This Shore: A Reading of Kenji Miyazawa's 'Okhotsk Elegy'." Dharma World Vol. 43 (Tokyo: 2016). 25-29. This Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Discovering the Lotus on This Shore: A Reading of Kenji Miyazawa's "Okhotsk Elegy" by Jon Holt Jon Holt is an Assistant Professor Miyazawa wrote stories and poems in order to help others of Japanese in the Department of venerate, and propagate the Lotus. In doing so, he World Languages and Literatures at works that are both very Japanese and very worldly. Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. His research interests include modern Japanese poetry, Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933 ), perhaps and its past. Dedicated to writing Lotus Japanese Buddhism, and manga. Japan's most popular Buddhist writer literature (Hokke bungaku), Miyazawa Recent publications include "In a in the modern period, was also one of wrote stories and poems to help oth­ Senchimentaru Mood: Japanese Japan's greatest modern proponents ers understand, venerate, and propa­ Sentimentalism in Modern Poetry of the Lotus Sutra, a special text that gate the Lotus. In doing so, he created and Art" (Japanese Language and has remained highly vital to Japanese works that are both very Japanese and Literature [2014]); and "Ticket to since antiquity. Although Miyazawa very worldly. This welcome contradic­ Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism in was by profession a scientist and by tion is immediately apparent in his poem Miyazawa Kenji's 'Ginga tetsudo no avocation a writer of children's stories "Okhotsk Elegy" ( Ohotsuku banka), in yoru"' (Japanese Journal of Religious and free verse, he reminds Japanese of which the poet records his thoughts, Studies [2014]). His translations the bonds between their society today as he stands on the shore of a Japanese of Amari Hayashi's tanka recently appeared on asymptotejournal. com. colony formerly held by Russia, as well For access to as his emotional changes that come from full photos For access to reconnecting with the Lotus Sutra after please see a dark period when he doubted his faith, full photos Dharma World following the death of his younger sis­ please see July-Sept 2016 ter, Toshiko, in 1922. Vol. 43 Dharma World "Okhotsk Elegy" takes places in July-Sept 2016 Karafuto, not Japan proper. Karafuto Vol. 43 is the Japanese name for Sakhalin Island. Its southern portion below the fiftieth parallel north became a colony of Japan in 1905. Officially, Miyazawa went there in August 1923 in order to help pro­ cure employment for one of his students through a former colleague. Miyazawa wrote a total of five poems in this series, documenting his progress and return, but "Okhotsk Elegy" was the main poem and serves as the section title within Kenji Miyazawa walks in a field near Toshiko Miyazawa (1898-1922) when she Hanamaki Agricultural School in the early was a student at Japan Women's College his 1924 poetry collectiofl: Spring and spring of 1926. (now Japan Women's University) in Tokyo. Asura (Haru to shura). The poem is at DHARMA WoRLD July-September 2016 25 A Russian village on Sakhalin Island. Ca. 1930. (Reproduced from the Kenji Miyazawa visits Toyohara plant, a large pulp plant built by Oji book Nihon chiri taikei [A comprehensive outline of the geography of Paper Company, in Karafuto, to help procure employment for one Japan], val. 10, published in 1930 by Kaizosha and posted online by of his students. (Reproduced from the book Me de miru Karafuto Wikimedia Commons.) jidai [The Karafuto period in photographs], published in 1986 by Kokushokankokai and posted online by Wikimedia Commons.) once both Japanese and very other as it piano being pounded upon by the beach?" and he answered, opens, describing a near-alien landscape wind again and again and again) "Probably that part, but I don't know (the translation of the poem is mine): or perhaps it's just a shorter variety because I've never been over there:' of timothy? Now he gives me a kind, sidelong The surface of the sea has completely Morning dew droplets and asagao look gone to rust from the morning's blooms (Yes, in his small spectacles are carbonization there is the glory that we call morn­ reflected the white clouds of because you also have that green­ ing glories Karafuto) blue color, there must also be azu­ rite present. Despite the large number of names When we are lost in a foreign land, Far off where the waves disappear, or terms in this poem that are English, we ask directions. Miyazawa asked the there's much liquid lazuli. Dutch, and even Sanskrit, strangely there Japanese colonist about this place and are no Russian words to be found in got an answer that was both helpful Because we are reading an elegy this poetic topos of the Karafuto land­ and not helpful, but at least he made (banka), we know this is a song memo­ scape, one so close to fellow resident contact with another person. Reaching rializing a dead person's spirit. Banka Russian speakers. The landscape has a out to him kindled the spark of faith is one of the oldest forms ofJapanese fantastic allure for Miyazawa, refresh­ in other people, which Miyazawa had poetry. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (ca. ing his senses in the "glorious" seaside been missing. As Miyazawa often does 660-720), the great poet of Manyoshu ofSakaehama (Glory Beach), wherein in his "mental-image sketches" (shin­ (The collection of ten thousand leaves), he will rediscover the power of the Lotus sho suketchi), he breaks off from his composed a large number of elegies for Sutra. Miyazawa uses his cold, ratio­ internal conversations to speak with private and public purposes. Miyazawa's nal faculties to make sense of a fantas­ others, although he always returns to elegy, however, begins with a tone that tic place. His heart, aching for warmth, his own thoughts, often in the form of is entirely too rational. He is trying to soon finds succor: parenthetical asides. Now he reconsid­ make sense of this new, foreign land­ ers his botanical assumptions, perhaps scape with his mind, not with his heart. Here comes a dray meant for to reaffirm confidence in his rational Trained in the sciences of the soil, plants, open-country work, the one I powers. Miyazawa is still very far away and agriculture, he tempers his poetic just saw from the spirit of the person he came spirit with the logic of a geologist and the draft horse hangs its white, wiz­ to remember. a taxonomist as the poem continues: ened head and here's that goodness of the pack­ They look more like paeonia than the spikes of timothy grass have horse man asagao become so short like this that I felt earlier They are big beach roses and they are blown by the wind, over when I asked him on the vacant They are Japanese hamanasu roses and over and over street corner of the darkest red morning (What they are are the keys of a blue "Where is the most lively part of the Ah, the deep fragrance of flowers 26 DHARMA WoRLD July-September 2016 like these! The tracks of the horse, side by side The stalks of blue day lilies are half Somehow it must be the trick of remain on the brown sand, quiet buried in the sand fairies! and wet waves coming in; waves churning They bring to them countless indigo­ of course it's not that just the horse sand colored butterflies, has passed through I fall down into the fine gravel of and those small spear tips of golden but the wide ruts of its dray white schist and grass, are so faint; are lines of cursive I put into my mouth a piece of a shell greenish bamboo blinds, nephrite writing that was cleanly polished by the vases, and on and on waves Miyazawa's exhilaration of the scene and try to doze off for a while The landscape is a dizzy array of col­ is tempered by its solemnity. He came ors, shapes, smells, and light that over­ to communicate with the dead. Instead, If the landscape will not speak whelm Miyazawa's scientific mind so fairies and sunlight have distracted him, directly to Miyazawa, he will take the much that he cannot find predicates for exciting him about the beauty oflife. He landscape into his mouth. Although he all of his subjects. Magic, through these looks to the landscape and sobers him­ does not digest the shell, he has mouth­ fairies (yosei), defeats rational science self. He reconnects with the cart man, to-mouth contact with it; in turn, he and Japanese syntax. Miyazawa tries to with whom he had brief communica­ falls into the landscape, allowing the reassert his rational mind by using the tion. Instead of memories of speech, beach to absorb him in its colorful and provisional form ( ba) of predicates to Miyazawa begins to see messages in soft embrace: clarify the cause and effect of nature on the sand, a line of cursive text, which is human senses.
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