'Senryu' poet condemned military, capitalists

Last summer, I wrote about the dissident senryu poet Akira Tsuru (1909-1938) in this column. This year marks the centennial of Tsuru's birth, and a film about him has just been completed. Supported by the enthusiasm of interested citizens, the movie tells the little-known life of this man who stood by his anti-war beliefs during Japan's militarist era.

Through his works, Tsuru persistently condemned the inhumanity of the military and capitalists. Here is a piece about a pregnant woman whose husband was killed in war: "Her fetus was starting to kick/ When she took delivery/ Of her husband's ashes." Another senryu satirical poem depicts the dire poverty of a typical farming family, whose son has been drafted into the army and his younger sister sold into prostitution: "A letter from home/ Which he reads in the trench/ Says his sister has been sold."

Tsuru kept writing, consumed with anger, while a special higher police, the thought police known as Tokko for short, kept close tabs on him.

The film lovingly traces Tsuru's life until his arrest by the Tokko and death at age 29. I can see how much this work meant to director Seijiro Koyama, who undertook this "super-low budget" project financed with donations from like-minded supporters. Veteran actress Fumie Kashiyama plays her role convincingly as Nobuko Inoue (1869-1958), a senryu poet who protects and supports Tsuru to the end.

Nobuko, actually, is someone I think deserves to be better known. She was married to Kenkabo Inoue (1870-1934), also a senryu poet. After his death, Nobuko took over as the publisher of a senryu magazine her husband had started. One of the pieces she ran in her magazine was Tsuru's, which went: "A log/ With no limbs left/ Is how the nation lets you go home." Nobuko kept printing many such anti-war works in defiance of repeated oppression.

The year before Japan declared war on the United States, the Second Sino-Japanese War had already turned into a quagmire. Nobuko was in her 70s when she penned this piece: "Not knowing the national border/ Seeds of grass/ Spill across the border."

In the work, which is a virtual antecedent to John Lennon's "Imagine," Nobuko voiced her pacifist sentiment with an extraordinary resilience of spirit when her country was agog with jingoism.

Titled "Tsuru Akira: Kokoro no Kiseki" (Tracing the soul of Akira Tsuru) and scheduled to start showing in Tokyo next month, this understated film is full of deep reverence for individuals who did not waver. It appears that some people, long forgotten, have begun to shine quietly.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 7(IHT/Asahi: June 16,2009)