November 23, 2024 9:20 am

OCEAN OF MEMORY – Sagawa Chika, Japanese avant-garde poet

The beauty of nature, in a diary

Hokkaido is the second largest island of Japan and the Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu. The two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. There are many undisturbed forests in Hokkaido, including Shiretoko National Park (one of the most remote regions in all of Japan, much of the peninsula is only accessible on foot or by boat), and Shikotsu-Tōya National Park (the popular hot spring resort of Noboribetsu is also within the park) http://www.env.go.jp/en/nature/nps/park/shikotsu/

She was born in Hokkaido in 1911, and died in 1936, before her twenty-fifth birthday. Even so, she was one of the most innovative and prominent avant-garde poets in early-twentieth-century Japan. SAGAWA CHIKA had moved to Tokyo at the age of seventeen to join her brother, and they became part of a modernist literary group. She used free verse to explore her interiority, expressing an deepest individual relationship with the world and with nature. She grew up in an island at Japan’s northernmost tip, and even as a child, she was frail. Her real name was Aiko Kawasaki. She was one of the first female modernist poets in Japan. After her death, her poems were collected and edited as “The Collected Poems” (Shourinsha, 1936). Her “The Collected Poems” ends with diary entries that she wrote in the hospital, during her last weeks. She wrote in free verse, and her images were shockingly new.

OCEAN OF MEMORYHair disheveled, chest splayed out, a madwoman streels. A crowd of white words crumbles upon the crepuscular ocean. A torn accordion, a white horse and black horse storm across over it, frothing.

The intellectual property of the images that appear in this blog correspond to their authors. The sole purpose of this site, is to spread the knowledge of these artists and that other people enjoy their works. To pursue this issue, you can digit: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23368517-the-collected-poems-of-chika-sagawa

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