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Japan
YAPONESIAN GLOBAL GUERRILLA POET NANAO SAKAKI
If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
Sing Songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot
I first met Nanao Sakaki in 1993 at the Kyoto Connection, an eclectic event of the arts, headed by Ken Rogers, managing editor of Kyoto Journal. (As the Kansai Time Out editors told me recently, the Kyoto Connection, a model I had hoped Tokyo might emulate, folded last year, sad to hear.) At that time I was editing the bilingual literary journal, The Plaza, now online. Being quite moved by Nanao's reading, I asked Nanao if he could send work. Though he never sent anything -- it could be difficult to pin him down sometimes as he's such an inveterate wanderer -- I'd often go to his reading events which I'd try to promote using the platform of Japan Times.
Nanao, a walking collective call of the wild man, renaissance man, commune cofounder, scholar of languages & aboriginal culture & tribal traditions, troubadour to hang out with, lover of 'shrooms & the herbs, movement maker, The Tribes, homeless (except for the cabin in Shizuoka), green guru guy, activist, translator of haiku, mantra sutra rapper using the 5/7/5 syllabic meter.... Nanao is also better known in the US than in his home Yaponesia. My poet friend Kijima Hajime, a Walt Whitman scholar, didn't know about Nanao since he's more associated with the Beats and the Hippies.... Japan's first Dead Head?
So Kijima included Nanao's poem “Break the Mirror” in the bilingual booklet Over the Oceans: Contemporary Poetry from Japan (Doyo Bijutsusha Shuppan Hanbai, 2000), which he re-envisioned for both English and Japanese versions. Also in 2000, Blackberry Books, Nanao's main publisher in English, put out an anthology of writings on him entitled Nanao or Never: Nanao Sakaki Walks Earth A, by such as authors as Gary Snyder, poetry editor of Kyoto Journal, Robert Brady, Allen Ginsberg, Joanne Kyger and myself. Blackberry Books also published Nanao's poetry volumes Break the Mirror (1996) and Let's Eat Stars (1997). His poetry is infused with homegrown, funky, direct appeal. The first poem (untitled) in Break the Mirror tells us -- not didactically -- to take it easy. “April Fool's Day” in Let's Eat Stars is sharp-tongued in the eighth stanza:
To make schooling more efficient
The Ministry of Education wants
that all grammar schools & junior high schools
should be reorganized into three categories
A, Elite course.
B, Robot course.
C, Dropout course.
His other recent publications are the translations of haiku by Kobayashi Issa in the reprint Inch by Inch: 45 Haiku (La Alameda Press, 1999), which includes the original Japanese and translation printed in Nanao's script, and the romanization of the original on the bottom of each page. Since Spring is springing, here's one:
who can be
a stranger
under the cherry blossoms?
Also there's the bilingual Turtle Island, Kame no shima, by Gary Snyder with Nanao's translation (Yamaguchi Shoten, 1991). Yeah, it's been a bumper-crop several years for Mr. Nature.
In Yaponesia in the year 2000 his main publisher Studio Reaf, which publishes the activist journal Ningen kazoku (“Human family”) sometimes containing Nanao's newest poems bilingually, released a video of Gary's reading followed by Nanao's translation, Gary Snyder: Sing the Mother Earth, in Shinshu, 1991. The selections are from Turtle Island and Axe Handles. The Japanese language Kokopelli is a collection of poems containing the poem "Just Enough” in several languages, including Ainu, Ryukyuan, and English:
Soil for legs
Axe for hands
Flower for eyes
Bird for ears
Mushroom for nose
Smile for mouth
Songs for lungs
Sweat for skin
Wind for mind
Also, to check out: Nanao's fluid mantra reading style (Japanese) in the CD Poetry Reading by Nanao Sakaki: Kokopelli, performed at a shrine in Tokyo in 1999. Some time this year, I hope to publish an article based on my interview with Nanao in December 2001. Until then, here are the addresses:
Blackberry Books
617 East Neck Road
Nobleboro, Maine 04555
Gulf of Maine Bioregion
Studio Reaf
636-3 Kekurano
Minami Izu machi
Kamo gun
Shizuoka ken
415-0321 Japan
email: ningenkz@mail.wbs.ne.jp
NANAO SAKAKI ON THE NET
MIGNETTES: NEW PUBLICATIONS
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The most important recent work on Japanese poetry in English is The Singing Heart: An Anthology of Japanese Poems 1900-1960 (Katydid Books, 2001), compiled and annotated by Yamamoto Kenkichi and translated by William I. Elliott & Nishihara Katsumasa. In his lifetime, Yamamoto was already considered a major literary critic in Japan. He writes in the introduction, “In the East poetry from early on was written for the speaking of one's own heart and mind, and this idea jibes with The Singing Heart as the title of this book.” My personal favorites of the work included here are poems by Dadaist Nakahara Chuya, experimental Catholic priest poet Yamamura Bocho, and neo-surrealist Nishiwaki Junzaburo. Look out for an upcoming review of the book by Hiroaki Sato in Japan Times.
- Bill Elliott, a poet in his own right, just published Borrowed Breath: Lyrics and Longpoems (SARU Press International). He's better known is translator of Japan's beloved poet Tanikawa Shuntaro.
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Katydid Books is the premiere publisher of Japanese poetry in translation. Their catalog includes the titles Devil's Wind: A Thousand Steps by Yoshimasu Gozo, Dead Languages: Selected Poems 1946-1984 by Tamura Ryuichi (trans. Chris Drake), Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems 1972-1989 by Ooka Makoto & translated by Janine Beichman, and Responses Magnetic by Kijima Hajime. Thanks Katydid!
Taylor Mignon
