The John Solt Kitasono Katue Collection

A Seething Essay on Poetry (1946)

by Kitasono Katué

The period from 1940 to 1945 was a golden opportunity for the military leaders of this country to exploit poetry. And they certainly profited to a degree. However, strictly speaking, the poets (and poems) they exploited were not those who stood at the avant-garde edge of modem poetry; they had already retreated in the 1920s and lost their raison d'etre. This will become apparent when taking a glance at the poems written and broadcast from 1940-1945, in which nothing but pity can be found amongst the vulgar posing and sentimental agitation. But good poets of the future should perhaps have some appreciation for the existence of those poets, because within a packaged existence they were able to avoid being victims of the tragi-comedy of this idiotic century. At any rate, those poets, together with the perishing ruling class, will surely sink like straw sandals beyond the horizon of the past. Let's let the sinking ones sink! Unexpectedly for them, blood and tears— for that single dance— were squeezed out of the entire populace in an irrecoverable sacrifice.

Nevertheless, now an age of fresh poetry has dawned with new poetry magazines sprouting up nationwide. I earnestly hope that these poetry groups enjoy a fine future and a favorable development.

Voices already have been calling out expectantly for the emergence of avant-garde poetry. Those who experienced the atmosphere of the firs t World War in Europe have been saying that right now in Japan is the time for a second dada. Perhaps they are right. It is a matter of if there are now poets in Japan whose souls know loneliness, despair to the freezing point, and that inversion of perspicacious intelligence shown by Tristan Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck while body and mind were drenched in the Zurich rain. Because dada was not just a revolution of attitude or research, in demonstrations, and in efforts aimed at gathering like-minded people. When dada appeared in Paris in the Spring of 1919, there were the Cubists Salmon, Jacob, Apollinaire, the Symbolist Valery, and Side— all together close to thirty impressive members. Amongst them were Pound, Duchamp and Picabia in New York, and of course the painters Derain, Lhote, and Dufy, as well as the several young musicians who gathered around the composer Satie.

If the arts and society of present-day Japan truly need dada, it will surely arise. But artistic -isms must have the right timing, talent, cultivation and ambience to happen. Otherwise, only a simple, monkeyish imitation of Tzara will occur today in Tokyo, with already half of the decade of the 1940s having slipped away.

To say that dada which took off from under the wings of the Maurice Farman and the Breguet w ill take off again from under the wings of B-29s and Zero Fighters has even less interest for me than the meeting of the atomic bomb and a bamboo spear on an operating table. Moreover, the bounds of surrealism were exhausted by Luis Aragon and Salvador Dali.

For ten years there was the suffering of an ill-fated war, and now the miserable defeatism of the present. However, if Japanese poetry cannot extricate itself from accomodationism and the shameful dogmas which coopt, then it is clearly already the end of this country’s culture - an unpleasant thought.

But I bet my hope on the young poets to come, because I believe in the spirit of Japan's youth. Poetry, in fact the origination of all new art, is not born from simply a literary knowledge or something analogous. As soon as an -ism appears before us, its unique source is already decaying; whereas critics dream that the few withered branches they gather are alive. Here can be found both their impatience and the mechanism of their perpetually unfulfilled fate.

He who aims at creating a unique work w ill definitely not be in a rush. For an original work to emerge one actually has to undergo a long and patient mental process.

Anyhow, I would like to advise all young poets that if the -isms or works you are thinking about and planning are more or less related to other people's work of the past, or if there are parts which can be thought of as a reaction to them, then your work deserves to be despised. As much as possible, the relationship with the past should be junked. A soap bubble which doesn't separate itself from the straw is not a soap bubble.

Raymond Radiquet, the poet who wrote Les Joues en Feu, said the following:

"I cannot believe in the ridiculous fable of works (in other words, he is dealing with most artists, those who have inferior talent and are unable to win approval), nor in the tale of pioneers. Incidentally, what pioneers? I imagine that for imitators and popularizers it is important to believe in the existence of pioneers."

Young poets, in fact all poets as well as critics should mull over his words. It can be pure-minded to find a model for oneself in a pioneer, but to search or wait around for a pioneer is silly, lazy, and a shameful hope.

In any case, and I mean this in a completely different sense from how the war leaders previously used poetry, there is now in 1945 a golden opportunity for poetry to use politics, society and lifestyle. No, use is not the right word. Like the role of the straw in regard to the soap bubble, we should view those areas as taking the role of accelerators in our poetic thinking. This idea is adequately impartial; just like improving the function of the driving-wheel mechanism, we need to take into account for our poetic activity the validity of actions in politics, society and lifestyle.

For a long time Japanese poetry in its melting-cookie lyricism has been wasting time on pure little birds. Accordingly, all poetry declined in critical vigor and beauty. And poetry then became for non-poets no more than generous helpings of boredom and tunes to accompany love. A chrysalis-like existence lacking critical eyesight. And then that long, drifting age.

We have to examine everything freshly and fundamentally, and change it. Here I have touched on, from several angles, some of the deficiencies contained in present-day poetry. As for tomorrow, I sincerely hope that Japanese poetry transcends this violent age and blooms profusely.

Sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones

September 1946