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| David Sulz |
David Sulz (translator of the Tomo epigraph “Be Not Defeated by the
Rain” Ame ni mo makezu) is a
librarian at the University of Alberta. He spent four years in the nineties on
the JET program in Miyagi (Sendai and Towa-cho) and tries to return often to
visit the kindred spirits there who remain among his closest friends. Other
translations include Jiro Nitta’s Phantom Immigrants (Mikkosen suian maru), Kenji
Miyazawa’s “The Poison Powder Police Chief,” and
lyrics from
songs performed by Miyagi friends.
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| Hart Larrabee |
Hart Larrabee (translator of the Tomo story “Anton and Kiyohime”) was
born in New York State and majored in Japanese at Carleton College in
Minnesota. He also earned postgraduate degrees from the University of
Pennsylvania and University of Hawaii. A
full-time freelance translator, he currently lives with his family in Nagano
Prefecture.
Both David Sulz and Hart Larrabee have translated
the famous Kenji Miyazawa poem Ame ni mo makezu. An excerpt of Sulz’s
translation appears in Tomo as the anthology’s
epigraph.
Below is the original poem in
Japanese, followed by the Sulz and Larrabee translations, which are fascinating
for their differences. Following the poems, each translator discusses his
approach to the poem and the resulting translation.
Here is
how the original poem would have looked if written horizontally. Miyazawa
used katakana instead of kanji and hiragana writing for much of the poem.
雨ニモマケズ 風ニモマケズ
雪ニモ夏ノ暑サニモマケヌ丈夫ナカラダヲモチ
欲ハナク 決シテ瞋ラズ イツモシズカニワラッテイル
一日ニ玄米四合ト 味噌ト少シノ野菜ヲタベ
アラユルコトヲ ジブンヲカンジョウニ入レズニ
ヨクミキキシワカリ ソシテワスレズ
野原ノ松ノ林ノ蔭ノ 小サナ萱ブキノ小屋ニイテ
東ニ病気ノコドモアレバ 行ッテ看病シテヤリ
西ニツカレタ母アレバ 行ッテソノ稲ノ束ヲ負イ
南ニ死ニソウナ人アレバ 行ッテコワガラナクテモイイトイイ
北ニケンカヤソショウガアレバツマラナイカラヤメロトイイ
ヒデリノトキハナミダヲナガシ
サムサノナツハオロオロアルキ
ミンナニデクノボートヨバレ
ホメラレモセズ クニモサレズ
ソウイウモノニ ワタシハナリタイ
This is
how the poem was discovered written in Kenji Miyazawa’s notebook:
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| courtesy of the Daimaru Museum |
Following is David
Sulz’s translation of Kenji Miyazawa’s poem Ame
ni mo makezu:
Be not defeated by the rain. Nor let the wind prove your
better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer.
Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a
quiet joy.
Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you.
Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear.
A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade.
A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the
day.
If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health.
If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of
burden.
If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel
his fear.
If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues:
Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit.
In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy.
In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy.
Stand aloof of the unknowing masses:
Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man".
This is my goal, the person I strive to become.
Following is Hart’s Larrabee’s translation of Kenji Miyazawa’s
poem Ame ni mo makezu :
Unbeaten
by the rain
Unbeaten
by the wind
Bested
by neither snow nor summer heat
Strong
of body
Free of
desire
Never
angry
Always
smiling quietly
Dining
daily on four cups of brown rice
Some miso and a few vegetables
Observing
all things
With
dispassion
But
remembering well
Living
in a small, thatched-roof house
In the
meadow beneath a canopy of pines
Going
east to nurse the sick child
Going
west to bear sheaves of rice for the weary mother
Going
south to tell the dying man there is no cause for fear
Going
north to tell those who fight to put aside their trifles
Shedding
tears in time of drought
Wandering
at a loss during the cold summer
Called
useless by all
Neither
praised
Nor a
bother
Such is
the person
I wish
to be
Translator Q & A
What inspired
you to translate this poem?
David Sulz: I had a professor who once told us that after
studying Chinese for four years at university, he had no idea what to do next. He
sent $50 to a bookstore in Hong Kong and received many boxes of Chinese books. Overwhelmed,
he chose the thinnest book and started translating it. Through various
coincidental twist and turns, that serendipity led to his becoming a world
expert on a particular Tang dynasty Chinese poet.
In general, anything I try to
translate is a combination of serendipity and personal connections. For
example, a historical novel based in places I lived and songs, nature art activities,
and travel TV shows created by close friends with whom I could discuss the
meaning. A good friend with whom I often had deep philosophical conversations
happened to visit Kenji World in Iwate prefecture and brought me a copy as a
souvenir. So this falls into both categories: serendipity and personal
connection.
Hart
Larrabee: I live in a little town called Obuse in northern
Nagano Prefecture. A local sake brewery hosts a monthly lecture series,
inviting accomplished people who are passionate about what they do to give a
talk followed by an evening of conversation fuelled by the brewery’s delicious
sake and seasonal cuisine. For a number of years I regularly translated or
edited the English portions of the bilingual summaries of each session for
publication by the brewery.
Designer Taku Satoh,
perhaps best known for product and packaging designs, came to speak in August
2004. Satoh is also art director for Nihongo
de asobo (Let’s Play in Japanese), a wonderful NHK
educational program on which Ame ni mo
makezu is a recurring theme, and he concluded his talk with a reading of
the poem.
A bit of Googling quickly
turned up a couple of existing versions, but I wanted to avoid infringing on
anyone’s copyright and there was little time to arrange permissions.
Since I was already reasonably familiar with the poem from the old Hibbett
& Itasaka textbook I had used years before in college, I decided to
retranslate the poem myself. The version here is a slightly edited version of
the one I produced then.
Can you
explain your approach to the poem and discuss your translation?
Hart Larrabee: Particularly
given the poem’s posthumous discovery in a private notebook, I see it more as a
meditation than a moralizing exhortation or socio-political commentary. I
wanted to amplify by simplifying, and tried to draft
something straightforward and direct without anything extraneous. The poem itself
is pretty lean, and I wanted to resist the temptation to expand and explain in
the translation.
David Sulz: I did this 15 long years ago, and I didn’t know
much about translation ideas and expectations back then and I really just
wanted to understand the poem and have interesting discussions about its
meaning (I also remember being quite bored at work with lots of spare time). I
had no concerns about translating it “correctly” or “appropriately” because I
wasn’t doing it for marks or recognition. This was before the Internet became
so widespread (believe it or not) so I had no expectation that anyone other
than family and maybe some close friends would read it. I suppose I could have
looked into publishing it in a journal or book or anthology somewhere but
posting it on “the world of Kenji Miyazawa” website was as far as I got.
In another coincidence, I had
just been given a thick book of Alexander Pope’s poetry and especially loved
his “Essay on Man.” I think much of the wording, phrasing, language, and so
much else in my translation was influenced by his 18th century,
English style (well, maybe not the heroic couplets for which he was renowned). English
poetry experts might not see anything of Pope in my translation and I’ve seen a
few comments that it does not accurately reflect the style in which Miyazawa
wrote in the context of his time. Miyazawa’s version is very simple for an
educated man because, despite his education, he supposedly felt more in tune
with the rural folk so wrote in a simple, unpretentious style. Someone
commented that his style might be compared to e.e. cummings who wrote poems in
English without capital letters.
Admittedly, my translation is anything
but simple, straightforward, current English but this wasn’t an intellectual
exercise. The style and words just happened and that probably was a result of
many small influences at that particular time. I wonder what would happen if I
was somehow able to forget my previous translation and try translating it again
now.
What are
some of the challenges in translating this particular poem? What were your
problem/challenge spots?
David Sulz: Honestly, all of it was a challenge! I don’t want
anyone to think I sat down and translated this in an afternoon all by myself. I
had lots of advice and explanations from many people even if, unforgivably, I
don’t remember exactly who anymore. I remember several passages that caused lively
debate among my Japanese friends which, by the way, is something any good poem
or idea should do. Specifically, I remember two parts taking a long time and that
I probably took liberties with in translating.
One is the part about shedding
tears during a drought and walking in concern in cold summers. The connection seems
to be the anxiety one should feel for friends and neighbours, in this case
farmers, who will have a lean winter because their harvest won’t be plentiful.
Another tricky part was why it
would be “better dismissed as useless than flattered as a “great man.” It’s
hard to come up with other ways to explain what I think it means but I’ll try.
Flattery is insincere and manipulative so a “great man” doesn’t know what
others really think of him and he might be talked into doing things that others
don’t want to take responsibility for themselves. Conversely, it doesn’t really
matter if some people think you are useless as long as you (and those closest
to you) know your own worth – you are free to be yourself with less pressure.
Perhaps it is so hard to grasp Miyazawa’s meaning because it is completely
opposite to what we are normally led to believe – that it is better to be
considered great than useless.
After finally understanding the
meaning, of course, the biggest challenge was finding words and phrases in
English that preserved the Japanese meaning and character but allowed rhythms
that sounded harmonious and lyrical in English.
In other words, making it sound right.
Sadly, my Japanese ability these
days isn’t good enough to easily go back to the original poem and reconstruct
the challenging points but I think those spots can be deduced by comparing where
various English translations have different interpretations.
Hart Larrabee: I was always bothered by the use of the conditional
“if” in translations of the section listing the four directions, even though it appears
formally faithful to the areba in the
original. To me it
suggests a rigid logic, an image of a protagonist who, alerted somehow to the
existence of a sick child or a weary mother somewhere, only then dashes into
action. In the original, though, the conditional just seems part of a
rhetorical structure designed to indicate that the protagonist would show
compassion toward all wherever he might find them. So I was pleased to dispose
of the “ifs.”
In reviewing my translation for this interview, I
decided to take another stab at the third and fourth lines from the bottom,
which I originally rendered as Unpraised
/ Unnoticed. This translation bothered me because the protagonist would
certainly have to be noticed before he could be called useless, but I couldn’t
come up with anything better at the time. I probably also originally
misunderstood ku ni sarezu, which I now feel is more at “not seen as a pain in
the neck” than “not paid attention to.”
What do
you think of other translations of Ame ni mo Makezu?
David Sulz: I love reading various translations of this work,
it is a great example of the complexity of translating between two languages
whose grammar and style is so completely opposite and whose worldview is quite
different. I don’t think there is any way to capture in English how the
elegance of Miyazawa’s writing appeals to Japanese readers and, at the same
time, make the profound meaning accessible in English. It seems a translator
has a dilemma with this poem - accurate but choppy or rhythmic but sacrificing
accuracy.
Hart Larrabee:
A poem is a puzzle with many solutions, and I like
bits and pieces of all of them given their respective approaches. Some versions
introduce a third-person “he” or reveal the first-person subject early, but I
think the immediacy of the poem is lost in the former approach while the latter
gives too much away. I’m sure I saw David Sulz’s version back in 2004, and
remember also being influenced by Steven
Venti’s (See: www.bhk-limited.com). Another source, one I only discovered
recently, (See: japanfocus.org/-Hiroaki-SATO/2526) contains numerous treatments
of the first section, which can then be used to track down full versions by
translators such as Makoto Ueda, Donald Keene and Roger Pulvers. It’s amazing,
really, how many ways even such a short poem can be rendered, and with such
different results. Beyond the issue of explanatory additions I mentioned above,
even little decisions like which article to use or whether a noun should be
plural or singular can really change the sense of the translation.
What do
you particularly like about this poem?
David Sulz: I love the human vs. nature struggle. It is not
about defeating nature, or escaping into your basement/car/office/mall, or
coming up with technology make yourself immune to nature. It’s about accepting
nature, dealing with nature on its own turf,
and becoming mentally strong enough to not only endure but also enjoy it.
Maybe this poem has influenced me embrace winter in one of the coldest winter
cities on earth, Edmonton, where walking to work in -40 degrees or playing
hockey outdoors or cross-country skiing is even more satisfying an achievement
than in warmer climes.
I also like the idea that one can
be both humble and strong at the same time. Humility isn’t weakness and
strength isn’t aggression. A satisfied and good person doesn’t have to be
ostentatious with big houses and fancy meals. Courage also comes from small acts
that seem easy on paper but are difficult in real-life such as convincing
people to stop quarrelling or helping someone with a heavy load when lots of
other people are watching.
Finally, I appreciate the last
line—“this is my goal, the person I strive to become.” Miyazawa is not telling
anyone else how to act or be except by his own example—which is very Buddhist,
I think. He is saying, here’s what I think it takes to be human, I’m going to
try to achieve it, you can try too if you’d like but you don’t have to.
Hart Larrabee: On its own, I like it as a
spare and deeply personal meditation on right living. As a phenomenon, I am
fascinated by the way it has been employed post-3/11 to convey a kind of stoic
resolve in the face of tragedy. I can’t help but wonder if Satoh’s use of the
poem on Nihongo de asobo—recitations
of the poem in regional dialects from around Japan are one of my favorite parts
of the show—helped lay the groundwork for the poem’s resurgence.
And to
conclude, here is actor
Ken Watanabe reading the poem in Japanese.
