Metrics Bound and Unbound: Japanese Experiments in

Translating Poetry from European Languages

Katsuya Sugawara

Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Volume 54, 2008, pp.

58-73 (Article)

Published by University of Toronto Press

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/402968

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 MEtrics Bound and unbound
Japanese Experiments in Translating
Poetry from European Languages

Katsuya Sugawara

I
n the scheme of the source versus target dichotomy, Japanese literary tradi-
tion, from its reception of Chinese classics down to the modern importation
of the European/American inventory, has opted for source texts. Classical
Chinese was interpreted according to the kanbun translating procedure which,
adhering to every character in the source text, required inverting word order and
supplying grammatical particles. The wide gap between an isolating language and
an agglutinative language, as well as the radically different syntactical systems,
was thus bridged. By the very nature of a translating method preserving all of
the original characters, however, kanbun reading entailed the enthroning of the
source writings. Modern Japanese translation, with its ambitious agenda of as-
similating Western civilization, retained to a certain extent the kanbun tradition
toward the textual heritage in European languages. While there existed numerous
examples of abridging and adapting for the sake of comprehension through their
recognized literary customs, Japanese translators generally tried to show word-
for-word fidelity to the texts written in irreconcilably different language systems.
Among the numerous literary experiments vis-à-vis European languages, the
translation of poems presented a daunting challenge to Japanese literary circles.
Besides the divergent syntactical systems, with Japanese sentences normally
ending with verbal phrases, they had to cope with unfamiliar prosodies, or
markers that distinguish poetry from other forms of linguistic behavior. In the
last two decades of the 19th century, when Japanese intellectuals undertook to
introduce the European verse system, what they were keenly conscious of were
such properties as follows:
(1) The so-called ‘western poem’ is much longer than its counterpart, rep-
resented by waka which consists of thirty-one (five, seven, five, seven, and
seven) syllables (or, more precisely, mora).1
58 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
(2) Western verse consists of independent lines, while in Japanese prosodic
tradition a line is not considered a constituent unit of poetry.
(3) Some European languages make ingenious use of accentuated syllables to
construct a metric system, in contrast with the Japanese language which has
no other means to compose verse other than the patterning of moraic units.
(4) Western verse is highly dependent on rhyming systems, which had not
yet been systematically exploited within the Japanese poetical tradition.
In this paper, I reappraise four representative anthologies of ‘Western’ poems
published in a redefining stage of Japanese poetry, from the 1880s through the
1920s, focusing on how their compiler-translators mended linguistic and prosodical
gaps. Their most crucial concerns included which poetical features of Western
poetry they should introduce to revamp Japanese prosody and how they could
adapt them into another completely different context. The translators tried to
exhaust the full possibilities of the Japanese language and we might appropriately
characterize their endeavors as experimental. Their attempts progressed from a
systematic reproduction of Western poetics, through apt appropriation, to the
deliberate abandonment of imposing models. In other words, their principles of
translation shifted from source-orientated experimentations to target-oriented
creative renderings. The four anthologies, listed below, represent key stages in
the historical development of translating Western poems.
1. Omokage [Reflections] by Ôgai Mori and his group, published 1889.
2. Kaicho’on [The Sound of the Tides] by Bin Ueda, published in 1905.
3. Sango shu [Coral Collection] by Kafu Nagai, published in 1913.
4. Gekkano ichigun [A Flock in the Moonlight] by Daigaku Horiguchi,
published in 1925.
The experimentation in Omokage and Kaicho’on was executed with
methodological rigor, providing insightful observations to the linguistic properties
of Japanese and its prosodical possibilities. In Sango shu and Gekkano ichigun
the emphasis was on appreciating, appropriating, and disseminating poetical
sensibilities and ideas in a more colloquial style verging on free verse as
developed in various strains of European poetry, especially the Symbolists and
their successors down to the modernists of the early 20th century. The following
brief survey centers more on the prosodical exploration in translational terms than
on the importation of various literary movements.

I Omokage (1889)
Although five people are identified as translators, it is evident that Ôgai Mori,
working as an organizer and leader of the group, formulated the principles con-
cerning translation methods in Omokage. The four methods which are specified
on the very first page of the anthology are as follows:
1. i-yaku [content translation]: rendering the content of the source text
2. ku-yaku [syllable translation]: rendering the content and the syllabic pat-
tern of the source text
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 59
3. in-yaku [rhyme translation]: rendering the content, the syllabic pattern,
and the rhyming of the source text
4. cho-yaku [meter translation]: rendering the content, the syllabic pattern,
the rhyming, and the metrics of the source text2
A propagandist for extensive modernization, a key formulator of national
agendas, and a medical doctor for the Japanese army by profession, Ôgai (1862–
1922) started his brilliant literary career in the mid 1880s. Along with monographs
on hygiene, he set out to publish literary criticism, short stories, and translations of
European literature mainly from German. Omokage, which showed his profound
interest in the prosodical issues of Japanese verse, was one of the products of his
versatile literary practice and was intended to introduce European literary tradition
to the Japanese literary circle.
Omokage’s systematic experimentation focused on how to achieve equivalence
despite the apparent incompatibility of divergent cultures. Judging from what was
produced from their methodology, Ôgai and his group apparently decided that
the translation of poems should not be mere prose paraphrases but rather should
have poetical markers on their own. This is highly apparent in their i-yaku, or
content translation pieces, whose objective might have been achieved if they
had provided literal, or word-by-word translation. For example, the last stanza
of Justinus Kerner’s “Abschied” was rendered as a piece of waka with thirty-one
mora.3 It only conveys the gist of the original circumstances but possesses every
qualification for an authentic lyrical poem in the Japanese waka tradition.
Ku-yaku is an attempt to place a fixed number of mora in one line so as to
reproduce, in theory, the source text’s pattern. Ôgai translated Goethe’s “Mignon”
from Wilhelm Meister by setting up a structure of twenty-mora lines. Here are
the first two lines of both the source text and the transliteration of the target text
in Japanese.
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn,
Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn,4

remon no ki wa hanasaki kuraki hayashino nakani

koganeiro shitaru kôjiwa edamo tawawani minori5

It is immediately apparent that Goethe’s poem consists of lines with ten

syllables while in Ôgai’s translation the first line is made up of twenty morae,
and the second line, twenty-one morae. In experimenting with syllabic-moraic
patterning in translation, Ôgai assumed they needed roughly double the amount
of syllables in Japanese mora to represent the idea of the source text in European
languages. With its completely new rhythm, Ogai’s translation of “Mignon,”
along with “Ophelia’s Song,” is considered one of his best products in Omokage.
Accordingly it has stimulated numerous other endeavors in the creation of new
sound structures in the Japanese language.
In-yaku is an experiment in rhyming in Japanese. Below is the second stanza
of “Ophelia’s Song” from Hamlet IV, v and the corresponding part of Ogai’s
translation.
60 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
And his heels a stone.6

Kare wa shinikeri waga himeyo

Kare wa yomijie tachinikeri
Kashira no katano kokeo miyo
Ashi no kataniwa ishitateri7

Although the first and third lines by Shakespeare do not rhyme at all, Ogai,
consulting A.W. Schlegel’s translation in German,8 constructed a regular a/b/a/b
rhyming scheme, making two pairs of sound correspondence in Japanese; the
first and third lines share one mora (-yo) while in the second and fourth lines
two vowels and one consonant identify with each other (-eri). This rhyming
pattern is repeated throughout the three stanzas of the translation. Furthermore,
Ôgai employs alliteration in the stanza cited above from the first line through the
third line and within the third line with the [k] sound occurring four times. Such
exhaustive experimentation with sound patterning was unprecedented in the history
of Japanese poetry and supplied a model for the following generation of poets in
their endeavors to introduce literary innovations.9
We might view Ôgai’s Cho-yaku as either poetical virtuosity or as a complete
failure in Japanese prosodical endeavors. Given that Japanese has no system of
stressing certain syllables within a word, aside from the intonation practice using
sound pitch, reproducing in Japanese accentuated syllabic patterns of European
languages such as English and German was a practical impossibility. In such a
predicament, Ôgai made use of the tone system of classical Chinese, assigning
even tones to stressed syllables and uneven tones to other unstressed constituents.
Thus the trochaic tetrameter in the beginning lines of Byron’s Manfred
When the moon is on the wave
And the glow-worm in the grass,10

is translated into classical Chinese with even-tone characters mechanically al-

ternating with uneven-tones.11 Considering the exalted literary status of classical
Chinese in late 19th century Japan, exploiting Chinese prosody might have been
an ingenious solution to the problem. These lines also offered a kind of specimen
from the European metrical system—its sheer mechanical arrangement unimagi-
nable in the genuine Chinese versification—for those who were well versed in
traditional kanbun learning but comparatively ignorant of Western literature. The
text produced through this translation method, however, reads oddly as Chinese
verse and did not succeed in presenting a promising model for the on-going poeti-
cal experiments in Japanese. It delineated the limit of prosodical possibilities in
the Japanese language, showing that it might not be able to accommodate itself
to the European metrical system by employing accentuated syllables.
Omokage’s achievements provide us with illuminating insight into the
execution of translation. First, analyses of poetical texts in European languages
were presented; then their four properties—content plus syllabic, rhyming, and
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 61
metrical pattern—were sorted out according to how the source texts could be
rendered into the target text. Ôgai and his editors presented them not just as
methodological experimentations, but for the sake of better understanding the
prosodical conventions of European languages, the rudimentary knowledge of
which was not yet generally shared by contemporary Japanese intellectuals.
Secondly, by reproducing some formal features of European poetry, the translations
in Omokage offered working models for coming generations of Japanese poets.
Various attempts at moraic patterning, carried out at once as a way of revamping
the traditional alternations of seven and five mora, and as a creation of new
experimental structures, like repetitive arrangements of the same number of
syllables in “Mignon,” were to become one of the major concerns of Japanese
poets for decades. Rhyming in Japanese, though it sometimes turned out to be
a Sisyphean labor, presented an irresistible challenge to them. Poets explored
the Japanese language theoretically and linguistically to ascertain the viability
of rhyming. Thirdly, in contrast with the linguistic properties of European
languages (in this case German and English), they examined various aspects of
the Japanese language. The syllable, or to be precise the mora, presented itself
as the only working unit for prosodical structuring in Japanese. Poets verified in
a number of subsequent experiments that they needed almost twice the number
of mora as syllables in the target text (Japanese) in order to translate the idea of
the source text in European languages. Ultimately, Ôgai Mori’s Omokage, which
is a product of fairly early and successful poetical experimentation in modern
Japanese literature, showed that the act of translation enriches our knowledge of
both the source language and the target language.

II Kaicho’on (1905)
Kaicho’on includes 57 translations from 29 European poets. Critics generally
credit it as the first anthology to systematically introduce the Parnassians and
the Symbolists to Japanese readers. It had an enormous impact on contemporary
Japanese literature and is a monumental work in the history of literary transla-
tions in Japan.
In the beginning of his famous preface to Kaicho’on, Bin Ueda, the compiler
and translator, states his practical principles for translating his source texts.
I have employed a verse form based on the so-called seven-and-five-mora
meter when translating the grandiose style of the Parnassians, while I have
ventured to adopt certain irregularities for the profound and graceful style of
the Symbolists. It is for reproducing in them the respective original strains.12
He then expounds on developments in European poetry in the latter half
of the 19th century, especially the ideas of Parnassian and Symbolist poetry. He
discusses the use of symbols in poetry providing a historical background and a
sample reading of Emile Verhaeren’s “Parabole,” and defends the Symbolist
school against its detractors. Bin Ueda cites Leo Tolstoy but avows that he prefers
the Parnassians to the Symbolists. At the end of the preface, he mentions anew
his principles of translation, making a kind of confession of faith as a literary
translator. He refers to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s preface to the first edition of his
Dante and His Circle (1861), the key point of which appears in the following lines:
62 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to
endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty.
Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether sec-
ondary to this chief law. I say literality, not fidelity, which is by no means
the same thing.
Rossetti 283
Based on this view of translation, Bin claims that “one who wishes to transplant
the beauty of foreign poetry must not spoil its freshness for our poets’ techniques
by relying on manneristic idioms.”13 He then gives two examples of translating
poems from classical Chinese into Japanese. The first one, citing lines by Sugawara
no Michizane,14 shows free paraphrase with target-oriented elegant wording, while
the second one, citing a line attributed to Juri Bo,15 emphasizes the importance of
rational interpretation of the scene depicted in the poem.
Bin set himself a challenging task as a translator in the formative stage of
modern Japanese poetry. He tried to enrich a national literature with recent trends
in Europe. He justly boasted that he produced translations that read as poems
in their own right and literary historians nowadays almost unanimously agree
on his elegant achievements. One of his efforts consisted in constructing rough
equivalents of various verse forms in the European languages and in providing
translations which were free from constraints imposed by the traditional poetics
of the target language.
Despite his ambitious agenda, what he realized in his anthology appears
inescapably burdened with the tradition of classical prosody in Japanese. In terms
of the verse form, what he utilized was heavily dependent upon “the so-called
seven-and-five-mora meter” as he stated in his preface. It is a widely accepted
metrical matrix, developed along with the waka form, the oldest and most authentic
poetical form in Japanese literature. Bin contrived only to use it as a basic unit to
construct a line to accommodate the source text. Thus, an alexandrine in Leconte
de Lisle’s “Midi” is translated, for instance, into a line consisting of 7/5 and 7/5
mora. Below is the first stanza of “Midi” followed by the transcription of Bin’s
translation:
Midi, roi des étés, épandu sur la plaine,
Tombe en nappes d’argent des hauteurs du ciel bleu.
Tout se tait. L’air flamboie et brûle sans haleine;
La Terre est assoupie en sa robe de feu.16

Natsunomikadono mahirudokiwa ônogaharani hirogorite 7/6/7/5

Shiroganeirono nunobikini aozorakudashi amorishinu 7/5/7/5
Jakutaruyomono keshikikana. Kagayakukokû kazetaete 7/5/7/5
Honoonokoromo matoitaru tsuchinoumaino shizugokoro.17 7/5/7/5

As described in a section of Omokage, poets observed that they generally

needed twice the number of mora (for syllables) in Japanese to translate the ideas
in European languages. In the case of the French alexandrine, twelve syllables in
the source text are almost consistently converted into the repeated unit of seven-
and-five morae, which makes a total of twenty-four morae.
Once the pattern is established, it sometimes takes precedence over the literal
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 63
rendering of a source text. In other words, vehicles for formal equivalents assume
overriding importance in the act of translation, and the content is fabricated
or tailored in order to adjust it to the mold. In the first stanza of Baudelaire’s
“Harmonie du soir,” Bin creates an intriguing paraphrase in his translation.
Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!18

tokikoso imawa mizuesasu, konureni hanano huruukoro. 7/5/7/5

hanawa kunjite oikazeni, hudanno kôno roninitari. 7/5/7/5
nioimo otomo yûzorani, tôtôtarari, tôtarari. 7/5/7/5
warutsuno maino awaresayo, tsukareumitaru kurumekiyo.19 7/5/7/5

As is evident in this quotation, the alexandrine in the source text is converted

to the 7/5/7/5 formal pattern. The literal translation in Japanese might be rendered
in English as follows.
Now is the time when flowers waver on the tips of graceful sprays.
Flowers are fragrant in the friendly wind and they are like censors
where the incense is kept burning.
Its smell and sound in the evening sky tôtôtarari tôtarari.
Pathetic is the dance of waltz; oh its giddiness of the fatigue and weariness.20
(translation mine)
The diction in his translation shows great sophistication. Many words and
phrases have authentic precedents in the waka tradition. The imagery drawn from
the Christian church in the source text is transposed to that from the Japanese
Shinto and Buddhist religion. The peculiar development from one stanza to another
called pantoum is sufficiently reproduced as a coherent whole with no awkward
connection between the lines.
What is most noteworthy in the first stanza is the rendering of the latter half
of the third line. “Tôtôtarari tôtarari” is an onomatopoetic expression borrowed
from the Noh drama Okina [Old Man], and it allegedly represents the sound of
the bamboo flute and the Japanese flageolet. Japanese readers may not necessarily
be familiar with the original source in the classics, but the musical texture of the
onomatopoeia which follows the pattern of “five-and-seven-mora meter” strikes
the ear as something melodious. Given the fact that this “tôtôtarari” evokes music
in the readers’ mind, it effectively functions as a predicate for “the sound in the
evening sky,” a synesthetic expression for the fragrance of the flowers.
In his translation of “Harmonie du soir,” every line includes some expressions
which do not correspond to those in the source text but are supplemented as
elaborations on the original imagery. They are contrived for the purpose of keeping
the self-imposed 7/5/7/5 moraic pattern. The guiding principle in this case is to
follow the form while a loose paraphrase occurs at the cost of literality.
“Certain irregularities,” to use Bin’s term, are not entirely free of “the so-
called seven-and-five-mora meter.” The basic unit of seven and five mora persists
in almost all the lines in his anthology. The form adopted for Paul Verlaine’s
64 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
“Chanson d’automne” is a mere repetition of five-mora lines.
Les sanglots longs akinohino 5
Des violons vioronno 5
De l’automne tameikino 5
Blessent mon cœur minishimite 5
D’une langueur hitaburuni 5
Monotone.21 uraganashi22 5

This monotonous pattern, however, offered a new sense of proportion to Japanese

readers, for the five-mora unit was almost always combined with the seven-mora
counterpart. The music of Verlaine’s source text, engendered by a combination
of a few-syllable line followed by another, is adequately conveyed by this simple
repetitiveness. The syntactical arrangement is substantially different from the
source text, due to the syntactical nature of the Japanese language, but one sentence
structure to a stanza is faithfully kept. One may have issues with subtle discrep-
ancies in the imagery, but Bin’s performance as a literary translator is laudable.
The strategy of repeating a five-mora unit is adopted in another translation.
Bin renders the dimeter of Robert Browning’s “Pippa’s Song” from Pippa Passes
in five-mora and five-and-five mora lines with only one exceptional line in seven
mora.
The year’s at the spring tokiwaharu 5
And day’s at the morn; hiwaashita 5
Morning’s at seven; ashitawashichiji 7
The hill-side’s dew-pearled; kataokani tsuyumichite 5/5
The lark’s on the wing; agehibari nanoriide 5/5
The snail’s on the thorn: katatsumuri edanihai 5/5
God’s in his heaven― kamisorani shiroshimesu 5/5
All’s right with the world!23 subeteyowa kotomonashi24 5/5

In this translation, two five-mora lines and an intermediary seven-mora line

are followed by five five-and-five mora lines. From the fourth line to the end, the
two-stress rhythm of the dimeter is converted into two five-mora-unit cycles. It
would not be unreasonable for us to consider this an ingenious rendering of the
sound structure of the source text, since the Japanese language knows no stress-
based prosodical composition.
An intriguing case of exception exists in Heinrich Heine’s “Du bist wie eine
Blume” in Buch der Lieder. The moraic structure of the translation widely veers
from “the so-called seven-and-five-mora meter.”
Du bist wie eine Blume taeni kiyorano 7
So hold und schön und rein; aa wagakoyo 6
Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth tsukuzuku mireba 7
Schleicht mir in’s Herz hinein. sozoro aware 6

Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände kashirayanadete 7

Auf’s Haupt dir legen sollt’, hanamonino 5
Betend, daß Gott dich erhalte itsumademokakuwa 8
So rein und schön und hold.25 kiyoranareto 6
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 65

itsumademokakuwa 8
taeniareto 6
inoramashihanano 8
wagamegushigo26 6

Bin wrote the following sentences as a footnote to this translation.

I have translated Heine’s celebrated poem referring to (Anton) Rubinstein’s
fine music. While trying to be faithful to the original meaning, I gave special
heed to the caesurae and pauses designated in his score.27
As is evident from this statement, his translation was made not from the
original poem by Heine but from the score of Rubinstein’s music and it exactly
fits the tune. The irregular patterns formed by the lines with six and eight morae
are designed in order to accommodate the melodic line by Rubinstein. In this
translation, Bin reveals an interesting example of loose paraphrase. Rendering
into Japanese the refrain (Betend, daß Gott dich erhalte…) taken from the latter
half of the second stanza of Heine’s poem, he makes freer use of the components
in the source text and arranges them to capture its nuances. Thus the repeated
part shows a considerable variation in Bin’s translation and the last one offers a
conclusive ending for the whole piece.28
Bin’s endeavor of devising forms for the introduction of European poetry was
heavily dependent on the time-honored prosodical unit of the Japanese language.
The regulating rhythms created by the basic unit of five and seven mora reverberate
throughout his lines. ‘Irregularities’ are only some deviations from the established
combinations of five and seven mora. While some contemporary Japanese poets
struggled to create, for their own poetical venture, innovative forms such as
an alteration of eight and six syllables, Bin remained basically conservative,
sometimes eclectic, toward his assessment of form.
His compromise worked fairly effectively, however, in the formative stage
of modern Japanese poetry. His translations owe their great popularity among
Japanese readers not only to their elegant, authentic, and sophisticated diction,
but to their familiar echoes of traditional prosody. His irregularities were tolerably
recognizable as variations of “the so-called seven-and-five-mora meter,” and they
sounded charmingly fresh and original enough to Japanese readers.
If Ôgai’s endeavors were an experiment in prosodical possibilities in the
Japanese language, Bin’s anthology was full of fruitful applications.

III Sango shu (1913)

In 1926, thirteen years after the publication of Sango shu, Kafu Nagai wrote about
his anthology in an essay entitled “On Translating Poems.”
Almost twenty years have run their course since I tried my hand at translat-
ing European poems, following the examples of Mr. Ôgai Mori and Mr. Bin
Ueda. I was willingly engaged in the task at that time, not because I wished
to convey the lingering fragrance of the European poetry to our literary
circles, but because I believed it might help to add sophistication to my own
emotional life and diction.29
66 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
This statement by the translator himself epitomizes the character of this anthol-
ogy. Ôgai and Bin, whom Kafu admired as his mentors, were deeply conscious
of the pioneering nature of their task, but Kafu believed he was entirely free from
his predecessors’ sense of mission. As his experiences in the US and France were
exclusively personal unlike Ôgai’s as a medical student in Germany, for instance,
so too were his translations imbued with highly personal emotions.
In terms of the forms of translation, Kafu took greater liberties in processing
the source text. He squeezes, for instance, into a five-line stanza two stanzas with
six lines in Paul Verlaine’s “La lune blanche.”
La lune blanche mashironotsukiwa 7
Luit dans les bois; morinikagayaku 7
De chaque branche edaedano sasayakukoewa 5/7
Part une voix shigeminokageni 7
Sous la ramée... aa aisurumonoyo toiu30 2/7/3

O bien-aimée.31

The independent line of second stanza (“O bien-aimée”) is incorporated into

the previous stanza, as are the two other independent lines (“Rêvon, c’est l’heure.”
and “C’est l’heure exquise.”). The moraic pattern is still based on the orthodox
unit of five and seven, but includes an irregularity in the line corresponding to
Verlaine’s one-line stanza.32 In his translation of “Soir romantique” by Comtesse
Mathieu de Noailles, he was bold enough to make a free-verse or prose rendering.
The beginning four-line stanza with the rhyming pattern of abab as follows is
converted into a paragraph with two sentences in prose.33
Eté, j’ai cherché trop longtemps
A lutter contre votre grâce;
Ce soir, mon cœur est consentant,
Je suis voluptueuse et lasse.34

The free-verse rendering is only exceptional, however, in Sango shu. In most

cases the adopted forms are some combinations of five and seven mora with
certain irregularities as in the translation of Maurice Vaucaire’s “J’ai la mémoire
des parfums...” in his Petits chagrins.
J’ai la mémoire des parfums, de la musique
Et des couleurs. Pour évoquer les jours défunts,
Coupez des fleurs, j’ai la mémoire des parfums.
J’ai la mémoire aussi de la musique,
Certain rythme magique
Réveille le passé dans mon cœur nostalgique;35

Ongakuto shikisaito nioinokioku wareniyadoru. 5/5/7/6

Yukishihio yobikaesanto seba, 5/7/2
Hanaotsumitore. Wareninioino kiokuari. 7/7/5
Ongakuno kioku wareniyadoreba, 5/3/7
Ayashikiritsuno ugokiwa 7/4
Nosutarujiyano wagamuneni mukashiosamasu.36 7/5/7
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 67
Despite the prevailing conventionality of the form, Nagai Kafu’s translation
sounds quite novel. It shows, first of all, far more varied combinations of the
traditional units and they sometimes defy expectations of the pattern. It therefore
generates irregular rhythm and appears unfettered by “the so-called seven-and-
five-mora meter,” though the underlying pattern is still governed by seven and
five mora. It retains much of the literary language, but it is not archaic as in the
case of Bin’s. It preserves a delicate balance in terms of its formal considerations
between the legacy of traditional prosody and experimenting with new patterns.
It sometimes incorporates colloquial expressions conveyed in the traditional
moraic units of five and seven. Free-verse renderings are conducted in an elegant,
literary style as in the case of “Soir romantique.”
Kafu broke away from the strict source-oriented translation style. The forms
of the source text are substantially modified; the number of stanzas is reduced
as in the case of Verlaine’s “La lune blanche,” and rhymed stanzas in “Soir
romantique” are converted into prose-style free verse. His stance as a translator
was basically target-oriented, for his end in view was to “to sophisticate [his] own
emotional life and diction.” He was free from a sense of the pioneering mission of
introducing European poetry for the benefit of modern Japanese poetry. He was
indifferent to experimental schemes of developing a new prosody for the Japanese
language, though his poetic execution exploited existing prosodic resources in
innovative ways that exerted lasting influence.

IV Gekkano ichigun (1925)

Daigaku Horiguchi (1892–1981), the translator-compiler of the voluminous an-
thology Gekkano ichigun, had an unusual experience in his youth for a Japanese
citizen. Son of a diplomat, he left Japan in 1911 and enjoyed life abroad, first in
Mexico, followed by Belgium, Spain, Brazil, and Romania. He settled in Japan
only in 1925. During his time overseas he published three anthologies of translated
poems along with three collections of his own poems. Gekkano ichigun contains
340 poems by 66 poets, including French contemporaries such as Francis Jammes,
Paul Fort, Jean Cocteau, and Max Jacob. It offered a panoramic view of modern
French poetry from the Parnassians and Symbolists to Futurism, Dadaism, and
Surrrealism.
The poet and novelist Haruo Sato (1892–1964), Daigaku’s lifelong friend,
complimented him in a newspaper article on his achievement in Gekkano ichigun
as follows:
There is no trace of toil in your performance…It is a blessing that it even
appears unrestrained. I am weary of poems in translation, timid and fettered,
like bonsai or dwarfed potted trees. (Off with the useless resonances now
of the Kaicho’on!) Those gardeners were so preoccupied with the shapes
of the trees that they killed them. But what you have transplanted is left as
they were and—amazing and fortunate enough—they have bloomed quite
naturally there.37
As the translator of Chinese poems collected in the anthology Shajinshu,38 Haruo
Sato was keenly aware of the repressive literary conventions created by those of
68 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
the older generation like Bin Ueda. He genuinely appreciated the new, colloquial
style in Daigaku’s anthology which exhibited freer, target-oriented translation.
One of Daigaku’s most effective strategies was the editing of the source text.
He made ingenious excerpts from longer lines by a variety of poets and altered
them into independent short pieces of poetry. One of his most popular translations
is “Ear” whose original lines by Jean Cocteau run as follows:
Mon oreille est un coquillage
Qui aime le bruit de la mer39

These lines are from Cocteau’s much longer poem “Cannes” (the fifth and
final part of which consists of these two lines). Daigaku provided his own title
“Ear” and recreated it as a two-line poem.40 Another example is from Apollinaire’s
“Cors de chasse,” whose last two lines “Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse/Dont
meurt le bruit parmi le vent”41 were extracted and, with its original title “Hunting
Horn,” remade into a two-line poem.42 Daigaku follows similar methods with
numerous poems in translation.
Another conspicuous feature with Gekkano ichigun is its expansive
colloquialism. Daigaku’s lines are free from any set patterns, although he did
not refrain from using seven or five moraic units when he needed; literary
sophistication that gave precedence to classical diction was not one of his norms.
His style was marked by the use of the rhythm of prose and the vocabulary of
everyday language. Daigaku’s popularly known translation “Mirabô bashi” of
“Le pont Mirabeau” by Apollinaire does not exhibit any fixed schemes of moraic
patterning.
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qui’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine43

Mirabôbashi no shitawo seinugawa ga nagare

Warerano koiga nagareru
Watashiwa omoidasu
Nayamino atoniwa tanoshimiga kuruto44

Compared with many other translations conducted in prose-like colloquialism,

Verlaine’s “Il pleure dans mon cœur” provides a remarkable example of Diagaku’s
versatility at commanding different levels of Japanese language. Among the four
stanzas of the poem, the beginning four lines in the first stanza are molded into
elegant seven-and-five moraic lines with literary style, while the second stanza
scarcely shows any format of sound structure. The third stanza sounds rather
archaic with its mode of expression curiously resembling the kanbun reading of
a Chinese poem. It betrays the phraseology which is commonly used to make
literal translations of source texts in classical Chinese. The last stanza follows the
method adopted in the third stanza, modeling itself at the same time roughly on
the pattern of five and seven mora. Thus the two different styles in the first and
the last stanza are merged in an eclectic style.45 This is obviously a product of
deliberate manipulation of divergent modes of translation. Though the translation
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 69
is of a high quality, it is a kind of parody of the various methods of translation
stored in the Japanese literary inventory. The trajectory of endeavors in the history
of translation since exposure to ‘Western’ literature led to this stage where the
methodology itself is thrown into relief in the actual rendering.
Gekkano ichigun was an epoch-making anthology of contemporary French
poetry. His translation involves plain colloquialism, audacious modification or
editing, and free-verse execution of the source text. Its publication coincided
with the emergence of Modernist Poetry in Japan, which kept pace with the
developments of its European counterpart. After Gekkano ichigun, Japanese
literature did not have any anthology of poetry in translation as influential as
the ones I have discussed. It marked the culmination of experimentation in
translating poems from European languages.

V Conclusion
In the course of thirty-odd years from 1889 to 1925, Japanese modern poetry under-
went drastic changes. Among its many concerns, foremost was the establishment
of new poetry in Japanese based on models from Western literature. Translation
played a crucial role in furnishing relevant examples for accommodating widely
dissimilar prosody in the European languages. Ôgai Mori provided the basic
framework for addressing the issue, performing an exhaustive investigation of
real possibilities for poetry in the Japanese language. In his experimentations with
various forms, he was highly source-oriented in the sense that he tried to create
rough equivalents of essential features of European prosody. Bin Ueda was eclec-
tic and made workable compromises. His main concern was writing elegant and
sophisticated lines in Japanese while satisfying himself by exploiting the classic
seven-and-five-mora meter, occasionally devising some irregularities. Kafu Na-
gai was more target-oriented, making effective modifications to the source texts.
Daigaku Horiguchi was audacious enough to alter the source texts to create his
own versions and embraced sheer colloquialism.
In conclusion, the history of translating European poetry in the formative
stage of modern Japanese poetry was a history of a gradual shift from a resolute
source-oriented attitude toward target-oriented and flexible poetic execution. Four
distinguished poet-translators completed the shift in three decades during which
time modern Japanese poetry developed as a genre of its own, assimilating the
fruits of their translations.
The University of Tokyo, Komaba
70 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
Endnotes
1
Syllabic pattern in Japanese is better described in terms of the unit of mora. For a further
description, see “Appendix I: The Japanese Mora” in Koji Kawamoto’s The Poetics of
Japanese Verse. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2000.
2
Translation mine. Mori 4.
3
Geh’ ich bang nun nach den alten Mauern, /Schauernd rückwärts noch mit nassem
Blick, /Schließt der Wächter hinter mir die Thore,/Weiß nicht, daß mein Herz noch
zurück. Kobori 33. わかれかね心はうちにのこるとも／しらでやひとの戸をばさすらん Mori 33.
wakarekane kokorowa-uchini nokorutomo / shiradeya-hitono toobasasuran. As for
the source texts which Ôgai used for his translations in Omokage, Keiichiro Kobori,
conducting an exhaustive survey of Ôgai’s private library presently housed in the
General Library at the University of Tokyo, made solid bibliographical identification. In
citing the source texts of Omokage, I will use Kobori’s “Omokageno shigaku” [Poetics
of Omokage] in his Seigaku tôzen no mon [The Gate for Western Learning Reaching the
East]. I also owe much in my descriptions of Ôgai’s methodology to Kobori’s study on
Omokage.
4
Kobori 55
5
「レモン」の木は花さきくらき林の中に／こがね色したる柑子は枝もたわゝにみのり Mori 14
6
Kobori 96
7
かれは死にけり我ひめよ／渠はよみぢへ立ちにけり／かしらの方の苔を見よ／あしの方には石たてり
Mori 47
8
Er ist lange tot und hin, / Tot und hin, Fräulein! / Ihm zu Häupten ein Rasen grün, / Ihm
zu Fuß ein Stein. Kobori 98
9
Attempts at rhyming in Japanese were made rather sporadically in the history of Japanese
modern poetry. One of the most prominent examples is the anthology Machinepoetikku
shishu [Poems of Matinée] published in 1948, which included rhymed poems by
Takehiko Fukunaga (1918–1979), Shin’ichiro Nakamura (1918–1997), Shûichi Kato
(1919–2008), and others. Systematic investigation on rhyming in Japanese was made
by the philosopher Shûzo Kuki (1888–1941) in his “Nihonshi no ôin” [Rhyming in
Japanese] published in 1932.
10
Kobori 129
11
波上繊月光糾紛／蛍火明滅穿碧叢 Mori 52
12
高踏派の壮麗體を譯すに當りて、多く所謂七五調を基としたる詩形を用ゐ、象徴派の幽婉體を翻する
に多少の變格を敢てしたるは、其各の原調に適合せしめむが為なり 。Ueda 25, translation mine.
13
異邦の詩文の美を移植せむとする者は、既に成語に富みたる自國詩文の技巧の為め、清新の趣味を
犠牲にする事あるべからず。Ueda 28, translation mine.
14
東行西行雲渺々。二月三月日遅々。Sugawara no Michizane (845–903) is a Japanese poet
whose checkered political career gave birth to a lot of legendary stories. The translation
(とざまにゆき、かうざまに、くもはるばる。きさらぎ、やよひ、ひうらうらと) is cited from Konjaku
Monogatari [Tales of Times Now Past].
15
月上長安百尺楼。The translation (月によつて長安百尺の楼に上る) is also cited from Konjaku
Monogatari [Tales of Times Now Past].
16
Leconte de Lisle 290
17
「夏」の帝の「眞晝時」は、大野が原に廣ごりて、／白銀色の布引に、青空くだし天降しぬ。／寂たるよも
の光景かな。耀く虚空、風絶えて、／炎のころも纏ひたる地の熟睡の静心。Ueda 35. In the first line,
the actual syllabic pattern is 7/6/7/5, showing a hypermeter.
18
Baudelaire 47
19
時こそ今は水枝さす、こぬれに花の顫ふころ。／花は薫じて追風に、不断の香の爐に似たり。／匂も音
も夕空に、
とうとうたらり、とうたらり、／ワルツの舞の哀れさよ、疲れ倦みたる眩暈よ、Ueda12
20
Although it is difficult to show one-to-one correspondences, I have bold-faced the
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 71
words and phrases provided as glosses by Bin Ueda both in the transliteration and the
translation from Japanese.
21
Verlaine 56
22
秋の日の／ヰオロンの／ためいきの／身にしみて／ひたぶるに／うら悲し。Ueda 75
23
Browning 327
24
時は春、／日は朝、／朝は七時、／片岡に露みちて、／揚雲雀なのりいで、／蝸牛枝に這ひ、／神、そら
に知ろしめす。／すべて世は事も無し。Ueda 116
25
Heine 261
26
妙に清らの、あゝ、わが兒よ、／つくづくみれば、そゞろ、あはれ、／かしらや撫でて、花の身の／いつま
でも、かくは清らなれと、／いつまでも、かくは妙にあれと、／いのらまし、花のわがめぐしご。Ueda107
27
ルビンスタインのめでたき樂譜に合わせて、ハイネの名歌を譯したり。原の意を汲みて餘さじとつと
め、はた又、句讀、停音すべて樂譜の示すところに従ひぬ。Ueda108, translation mine
28
If a correspondence between Heine’s verse and Bin’s translation is emphasized,
the moraic pattern in the last two lines in the second stanza and in the refrain may be
counted as five and nine (itsumademo (5) / kakuwakiyoranareto (9) / itsumademo (5) /
kakuwataeniareto (9) / inoramashi (5) / hananowagamegushigo(9)). Bin’s translation
for the refrain which repeats the last two lines in the second stanza is different from
his rendering of the source text. Bin’s refrain runs “May you be forever as charming as
now, let us pray, my dear lovely girl,” while the last two lines in the second stanza were
phrased as “May you be forever as pure (virginal) as now.” Bin must have distributed the
three epithets ‘rein,’ ‘schön,’ and ‘hold’ into three different parts.
29
一時わたくしが鴎外柳村二先生の顰に倣つて、西詩の翻訳を試みたのも、思へば既に二十年に近い
むかしである。当時わたくしが好むで此事に従つたのは西詩の余香をわが文壇に移し伝へやうと欲す
るよりも、寧この事によつて、わたくしは自家の感情と文辞とを洗練せしむる助けになさうと思つたので
ある。Nagai 1994, 283, translation mine.
30
ましろの月は／森にかがやく。／枝々のささやく声は／繁のかげに／ああ愛するものよといふ。
Nagai 1993, 29
31
Nagai 1993: 21. Dr. Shigeru Oikawa conducted exhaustive bibliographical research on
the source texts of Sango shu, which could not be easily completed since Kafu’s private
library was destroyed during WWII. Citation will be made from the texts established
by Dr. Oikawa and included in volume 9 of Kafu’s Iwanami-shoten [Complete Works],
1993.
32
In his earlier version which appeared in 1909 in the magazine Joshibundan [Women’s
Literary Circle], Kafu designed a much freer pattern as follows: まつしろの 月が／かゞやく
森の中、／枝々の さゝやく声は／繁のかげに／おゝ 愛するものよ と云ふ。Nagai 1993, 291.
The moraic pattern of this stanza is 5-3/4-5/5-7/7/2-7-3.
33
夏よ久しかりけり。われ夏の恵み受けじといどみしが、今宵は遂に打ち負けて身中つかるるまでの快
さ。Nagai 1993, 84
34
Nagai 1993, 38
35
Nagai 1993, 26
36
音楽と色彩と匂ひの記憶われに宿る。／行きし日を呼び返さんとせば、／花をつみとれ。われに匂ひ
の記憶あり。／音楽の記憶われに宿れば、／怪しき律のうごきは／ノスタルジアのわが胸に昔を覚す。
Nagai 1993, 45
37
“For Daigaku Horiguchi, the translator of the anthology in translation Gekkano ichigun
[訳詩集「月下の一群」その著者堀口大学に与ふ] in Tokyo Asahishimbun, Oct. 11, 1925. 君の仕
事のなかには、何の苦渋のあとさへもない。 （…）
しかも奔放にさへ見える。有難いことだ。
こせこせとい
ぢけてしまつて、盆栽化した訳詩を、僕はもう見あきてゐたのだよ。 （――消え去れ！
「海潮音」の今にな
つて役立たずな余韻よ）それらの植木師は枝ぶりばかり気にして、到頭枯らしてしまつた。 しかも君がう
つし植ゑたものは、手もなくそこに投げ出されて、不思議や、めでたや、ぽっかりと花がさいてゐるでは
ないか。Sato 332, translation mine.
38
Shajinshu [Dust by the Wheel] was published in 1929 and was highly acclaimed as
another Kaicho’on in the domain of Chinese poetry.
72 Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54
39
Cocteau 180
40
耳／私の耳は貝のから／海の響きをなつかしむ Horiguchi 51. The intriguing point with
the translation, which appears almost literal, is that the French verb aimer is put into
natsukashimu, implying the sense of nostalgia, yearning and endearment.
41
Apollinaire 148
42
狩の角笛／思ひ出は 狩の角笛／風のさなかに声は死にゆく Horiguchi 30
43
Apollinaire 45
44
ミラボオ橋の下をセエヌ河が流れ／われ等の戀が流れる／わたしは思ひ出す／惱みのあとには樂
みが來ると Horiguchi 18
45
巷に雨の降る如く／われの心に涙ふる。／かくも心に滲み入る／この悲しみは何ならん？／／やるせ
なき心の為には／おお、雨の歌よ！／やさしき雨の響は／地上にも屋上にも！／／消えも入りなん心のう
ちに／故もなく雨は涙す。／何事ぞ！ 裏切もなきにあらずや？／この喪その故を知らず。／／故しれぬ
かなしみぞ／實にこよなくも堪へがたし、／戀もなく恨もなきに／わが心かくもかなし！Horiguchi 124
Literary Translation: Current Issues and New Approaches 73
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