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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

The Chieko Poems

Takamura Kōtarō

Translated from the Japanese and Introduced by John G. Peters

A Bilingual Edition

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Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956) traveled to New York, London, and Paris to study sculpture in the early 1900s. Upon his return, he wrote Dōtei (Journey) (1914), the first book by a Japanese poet to use Western free verse. The book also begins his famous series of poems about his wife, Naganuma Chieko (1886–1938).

Chieko was an artist and early member of Seitōsha, the Japanese feminist movement. She and Kōtarō broke with tradition by modeling their marriage on sexual equality. These poems are a touching record of their life together, and celebrate individuality and living in accordance with nature rather than society.

In 1931, Chieko became ill with schizophrenia, and eventually had to be institutionalized. After she died, Takamura began to question his Western values, writing a nationalistic poetry during Word War II for which he was condemned after Japan’s defeat. He retreated to a small hut in the mountains of Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan (in part as a kind of penance perhaps), and continued to write about Chieko until his death from tuberculosis.

From "Report (to Chieko)"

Japan has changed completely.
The coarse arrogant class system
that you hated so much you trembled no longer exists.
But in saying it’s completely changed,
the change came from outside help
(it’s called Japan’s re-education),
not an explosion from within like you,
that lively new world
you wished for from the heart
and at the risk of your life.