In the Blowing Wind
Amid the crowd carried along by the blowing wind, a handful of breath offered in my palm. In reply to Shiraishi Masako’s The silence of the flow of breathing people, a wind b…
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A Rose Is a Rose
When I opened Karui Saisei, I found a poem by Machi Tawara being introduced. With its price of four hundred yen, it became mine, yet the rose blooms as though it does not know. (Ma…
Kite Making
Once again today, I am not feeling well. I have had a persistent low-grade fever. I spent almost the whole day sleeping, but in the little time I was awake, my daughter and I drew…
Unmanned Station (Reply Tanka)
The railway vanishes toward the horizon; the train stands at the station; wind-blown snowflakes dance. Among station poems, there is one by my father, Isao Akimura: At a station wh…
Following a Faint, Gentle Wind
Following a faint, gently rustling wind, I ran on and on across the field. I rowed a boat out toward the midnight sea. The fairies’ festival, hands clapping; raise the torche…
To the Sound That Echoes
At the sound that echoes, an empty cicada shell comes into view— though it is the living body beneath a clear sky. Dear Shiraishi, This is late. It is a reply poem to the tanka you…
Hit by Norovirus
Looking up from the window of my sickbed, the depth of a clear sky on a mild winter day I was hit by norovirus. In the early hours of the 17th, I was suddenly struck by stomach pai…
10 Years Since Then—the Great Hanshin Earthquake
Ten years have passed; clouds rise into the deep-blue sky of an Indian-summer day. 10 years ago, on January 17, I was in Tateshina, Shinshu. I owned a small ramshackle house and wa…
Being Conscious of Death — 60 Years after the War, 10 Years after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake: Thoughts on the Chuetsu Earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami —
60 years have passed since the war, and people who do not know war now make up most of the population. In peaceful Japan, as long as one lives an ordinary life, being conscious of…