Sumitaku Kenshin: A Small Anthology and a Brief Biography
In the annals
of modern haiku, the name Sumitaku Kenshin (住宅顕信) (1961-1987) is, regrettably,
familiar only to Japanese readers. Such is his popularity in his native country
that his haiku is preserved in monuments—a not uncommon form of reverence toward
poets in Japan—and in a variety of media. Most recently, his life and poetry was
the subject of a major motion picture that received little to no distribution
outside of Japan. Given the rather regional and fragmented nature of the
Japanese publishing world, where it is difficult for authors to achieve
nation-wide renown, Kenshin’s success, rare and significant as it is, has yet to
achieve the same level of exposure outside of Japan as his stylistically similar
predecessors and contemporaries, for example Taneda Santōka (1882-1940), and
Ozaki Hōsai (1885-1926), particularly the latter’s, which has deeply influenced
Kenshin’s jiyuritsu, or “free verse” haiku—haiku that does not contain a kigo or
season word, nor adhere to the 5-7-5 mora structure. The reasons for this
oversight are, on the surface, somewhat difficult to explain, given that
translations of his work in English, French, and Hungarian, are readily
available on-line or less readily in print in literary journals or small press
publications. A potential reason for this oversight is that, in keeping with
haiku tradition, Kenshin’s haiku is subtle, complex, highly compressed, and,
given the considerable differences between Japanese and Western languages,
difficult to translate with any degree of accuracy without the addition of a
prose-like summary and explanation that would effectively negate the rigid
stylistic qualities inherent to the form. Its translation into other languages,
particularly English, at times render the haiku as somewhat flat, unexceptional,
and devoid of the intricacies of the original.
Nevertheless, in keeping
with the English and American haiku form initially developed in the early part
of last century and subsequently refined by countless practitioners ever since,
Kenshin’s work, competently translated into English, does still manage to offer
considerable richness and insight. His haiku, especially when viewed within the
context of his short but tragic life, is deeply effective and insightful, even
when the various sonic and conceptual intricacies are unavoidably shed as a
result of fitting the meanings into the unavoidable stylistic restrictions of
haiku in English.
1. Biography
Sumitaku Kenshin was born Sumitaku
Harumi on the 21st of March, 1961, in Okayama Japan. Though Harumi (meaning
“beautiful spring” or “spring beauty”) is generally associated with females, he
was likely given that name as he was born during the spring equinox. Sumitaku
was the eldest child in his family; a younger sister, Keiko, was born the
following year. As a child of 1960s Japan, Kenshin consumed copious amounts of
manga and anime then proliferated in popular culture—he was particularly
enamored of the works of Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989)—and for much of his childhood
he wanted to write and illustrate manga, the first indication of his creative
nature.
Kenshin completed his primary education in April 1976 at the age
of fifteen. He decided not to attend high school, which, in Japan, is not
obligatory, though the vast majority of children do go on to high school.
Instead, Kenshin pursued a career as a chef. He found employment during the day
working as a janitor at the Okayama Social center, while taking night classes in
Culinary Arts at the Shimoda Hotel School. There he began a short-lived romance
with a twenty-year old waitress, five years his senior. She became pregnant with
his child and, though Kenshin wanted to keep it, she opted for an abortion.
Kenshin’s parents allowed the couple to live together in their home, however
after eight months, she decided to leave him.
In May 1978, at the age of
seventeen, Kenshin obtained his Culinary Arts degree. He worked in several
restaurants, however his employment did not last. By 1980, he found work in the
municipal vehicle maintenance team; he became fascinated with bosozoku—Japanese
car culture centered on custom motorcycles and cars—and simultaneously developed
an interest in Buddhism. In September 1982, Kenshin began a correspondence
course in its study, from which he graduated in April 1983. In July 1983, at the
age of twenty-two, he was ordained a priest of the Hongan-ji branch of the Jōdo
shinshū school of Pure Land Buddhism. He was given the Buddhist name Kenshin,
roughly translated “blossoming devotion” and written with the kanji for
“revealed faith” (顕信); after his death, readers began to refer to him as Kenshin
in the haiku tradition of a haigo or pseudonym of a haiku poet.
In
October 1983, Kenshin married a woman named Emiko, who was at the time pregnant
with his child. Tragically, in February 1984, he was diagnosed with acute
leukemia and hospitalized; as luck would have it, his sister was employed as a
nurse at the hospital where he was treated; in Japan at that time, if one had a
relative who worked for a hospital, you were allowed residency there as long as
the relative agreed to take full responsibility for your care. As a result of
his illness, Emiko’s parents demanded and obtained a divorce. In June, Kenshin’s
now ex-wife Emiko gave birth to a child named Haruki (春木 meaning “spring tree”),
an echo of Kenshin’s own name, but also a tribute to poet, film director and
producer, and infamous drug smuggler Kadokawa Haruki (1942-). Haruki was
initially cared for by Kenshin’s parents yet spent most of his time with Kenshin
in his hospital room.
Shortly after Haruki’s birth, Kenshin began to
write haiku, in part perhaps to occupy him during his long stays in hospital. As
noted above, the jiyuritsu style of haiku he chose to write was, by the 1980s,
considered somewhat passé, having long been eclipsed by the more widely accepted
modern, shasei or “sketch from life”-influenced haiku form developed in the late
19th century by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) and championed by Shiki’s protege
Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959) in the pages of the immensely popular and
influential haiku journal Hototogisu, which Kyoshi edited. The opposing
tradition of jiyuritsu school, by contrast, was pioneered by Shiki’s other
protege Kawahigashi Hekigotō (1873-1937), who in 1911, together with poet
Ogiwara Seisensui (1884-1976), established the long-running literary avant-garde
journal Sōun (Layered Clouds). Kenshin studied carefully several notable
representatives of this movement, most notably Seisensui, Santōka, and
particularly Hōsai, whose work Kenshin’s haiku often echoes and alludes to, and
later became a member of the group centered around Sōun.
By early 1985,
Kenshin’s medical condition improved enough for him to be released from the
hospital. For a few months Kenshin devoted himself to the promotion of free
haiku. In August, he helped to found the journal Kaishi (Marine City). However,
by the end of the summer, his health began to deteriorate and he was forced to
return to the hospital. In December 1985, he self-published a collection of his
haiku, Shisaku-cho (lit. Draft Book).
Throughout 1986, Kenshin enjoyed
the visits of several haiku practitioners to his hospital room and was at work
on the manuscript of a second collection, yet his health worsened and he was
forced to remain in isolation. By Christmastime, he was so weakened that he
could no longer write and was forced to dictate his haiku to a woman admirer. At
the beginning of 1987, Kenshin’s chemotherapy treatment was discontinued and he
died on the seventh of February, 1987 at the end of the evening at Okayama
hospital, while being watched over by his sister. He was 25 years old. His final
manuscript, titled by Kenshin Mikansei (未完成) or Unfinished, consists of 281
haiku, and, at the behest of his friend (and literary executor) Shūichi Ikehata
(dates unknown), a former professor of mathematics at the University of Okayama
who replaced his love of alcohol with a love for haiku, was published in 1988 by
the same publisher as his cherished Complete Works of Hōsai.
2. On
Translating Sumitaku Kenshin
Translation is often a misnomer. To
translate is to imply that the full meaning of the original language has been
captured and adequately conveyed in another language. This is, arguably, an
easier task for prose than in poetry, where more abstract considerations such as
sound and metaphor, and in haiku especially, of wordplay, are the primary aspect
of the experience. In poetry, more so than prose, the words themselves are often
the main constituent. More often than not, especially with regards to Japanese,
which usually utilizes the highly visually syllabary of kanji where pictographic
features are still another abstract element, it is impossible for the translator
to provide equivalent visual, sonic, and suggestive aspects of the original.
Often a translator is therefore not engaged in translation so much as
transformation.
A thorough examination of the process of translation of
Kenshin’s haiku into English is beyond the scope of this brief biography and
selection. Nevertheless, perhaps one individual haiku will be sufficient to
stand as a representative example of both the difficulties and the possibilities
that translation offers. This haiku, notably, also provides the title for the
aforementioned film adaptation of Kenshin’s life.:
ずぶぬれて犬ころ
The
romaji is rendered as: zubunurete inukoro. The sonic qualities of the Japanese
are already apparent, with a heavy emphasis on the “u” or “ooh” sound, which
dominates four of the haiku’s nine mora. As rendered in English, it is
impossible to reproduce a similar effect:
As
rendered in English, we left with the rather flat, disappointing result of
a soaking wet puppy
To further break down this haiku into its
constituent elements, the translator finds that they are confined by the most
literal meaning, as English is a highly literal language, and is left, almost as
a consolation prize, with the hopes that this unavoidable reductiveness can
still suggest the music and the pathos of the Japanese. In this case, what
sublimity can be achieved with a simple, almost comically prosaic image of a
“soaking wet puppy”? Regarded in light of Kenshin’s biography, some consequence
is afforded: is it Kenshin himself this pathetic image of a young, hopeful,
innocent, naive animal, driven by instinct or perhaps abandoned into a storm
that has left him miserable and cold? Or perhaps his poor son, soon to lose his
father? Another haiku depicts his son in his galoshes; perhaps this is a
continuation of the same theme? His son, soon to be left alone in the world,
exposed to the unforgiving aspects of the world and with no father there to
protect him?
There is not even length enough to assign any line breaks,
as are traditionally added when translating haiku into a different language.
(Haiku is classically presented in one single vertical unbroken line of Japanese
characters.) In Japanese, further meanings are given that cannot be duplicated.
Most obvious is the echo of kokoro (meaning heart or mind) in inukoro. Zubu
brings to mind zabuzabu, onomatopoeia for gushing, sloshing, splashing, and
zubuzubu, a soft object pierced, to sink deeply into mud, to be inebriated.
Nurete, as well, has onomatopoeic resonances: nuranura is something slippery or
slimy. And these are only the most obvious. Taken into consideration, a more
comprehensive translation might be rendered:
a sloshing, soaking wet,
muddy, slippery puppy is the visual equivalent of my drunken heart and mind
Or, more briefly:
I am drunk like a puppy, soaking wet, slippery, and
covered with mud
Yet this would be to tell, and not to show. Abstraction
and concision must be preserved if it is to retain the same stylistic
considerations as its original. As a result, the translator must be satisfied
with “a soaking wet puppy,” and hope that he or she has the sympathy of a reader
familiar with both the rigorous complexities of haiku in Japanese and the
aesthetic sensibility that will accommodate the peculiar precisions and
limitations of haiku in English. If anything, haiku translated into a different
language has the more difficult task, as they are often far less alliterative
and densely onomatopoeic. The opportunities for music, for suggestion, for
allusion, and for wordplay, so crucial to the success of any given haiku, are
substantially limited in other languages, particularly English.
3. A
Small Anthology
With these restrictions in mind, I here present a few
examples from a small anthology of fifty-two Sumitaku Kenshin haiku, just under
one-fifth of his entire output, translated, or transformed, into English. These
haiku are derived from my translation of Unfinished, first published in 2023 by
Spuyten Duyvil. I include here the original Japanese and romaji renderings, not
present in the collected edition. Some of the haiku have been revised,
substantially or insubstantially, from their original form.
from 試作帳
Shisaku-chō Draft Book
だんだんさむくなる夜の黒い電話機 dandan samuku naru yoru no
kuroi denwaki
colder and colder the black telephone in the night
焼け跡のにごり水流れる yakeato no nigori-mizu nagareru
through the ruins
of a fire muddy water flows
淋しさは夜の電話の黒い光沢 sabishisa wa yoru no
denwa no kuroi kōtaku
loneliness— at night the black polish of the
telephone
洗面器の中のゆがんだ顔すくいあげる semmenki no naka no yuganda kao
sukuiageru
