Mother Leaf

The other day I noticed a pot for a plant with familiar leaves on my way to a temple where my deceased father and mother used to visit often.


I asked the owner to give me one of the leaves.

More than five years ago I found a leaf in a variety goods shop.

The shop keeper told me that the leaf came from Ogasawara Islands (Bonin Islands) that consists of main four islands called Iwo island ( it became known as the movie "Letters from Iwo jima"), Nishi-no-island, Father island, and Mother island, which are located southern area .

She told me the name as well. It was Mother leaf.



I bought it (100yen per a leaf), and put it on water in a small tray as the shop keeper told me.

About one week later it started to have some thin roots like this photo shows.

And about another week later some baby leaves turned out at the edge of the Mother leaf.

The baby leaves and the roots grow fast, and the mother leaf will start to decade soon.

Before, when I bought the leaf and raised a baby leaf to a plant with a stem,(actually the baby leaf came to have some mother leaves on the stem), I failed to keep it during cold season. The plant seemed to be a sort of tropical one.

This time I'd like to raise it again and maintain the plant carefully during this winter.





I happened to see the plant in a cafe, so I revisited there with a camera.



マザーリーフ繁らせて木々立つといふ父島、母島あを深からむ

They say there are many trees

with many Mother leaves

and it let me imagine the deep verdure

on Father island, on Mother island haricot



events in summer

Obon vacation , in the middle of August to graciously receive any returned souls according to Buddhism, was over.

I enjoyed to have time together with my family and do some events for the season, visiting our family grave yard for example.

And also I'm relieved now that my usual daily life came back for me.




This post is about a part of my passing of time during the vacation.

Just shortly before Obon, it was held that many tiny candles were lit on the field of Nara Park. It creates a feeling of welcoming returned souls with lightning about 20,000 candles totally, on some fields, along the road and in front of a temple, and so on. This event has been held from 1999.

In addition to the commemorating for ancestors and the war dead, that for the victims by the earthquake and tsunami on 3.11 was accounted this year.

百の燭（しょく）を覗きつつゆく　古都の野にうごめく影の一つとなりて

As a shadow

moving on,

I look into a protection

for each of tiny hundreds of candles

on a field of an ancient capital haricot

For my family's ancestors we visited our family grave yard.
My family is not Buddhists but Shintoists ( Shinto is Japanese indigenous religion), though in the grave yard there are tombs for both.( The shape of tomb stone is different: that of Buddhism is rectangular , that of Shinto is pointed at the top, and Buddhists offer flowers besides Shintoists offer green leaves called sakaki.)

And later I called in a Temple, Byakugo-ji（白毫寺）, because I like the location of the small temple,although most of Shintoists visit shrines not temples in general.

 
 
I like the serene atmosphere of this mountain temple as well.

In autumn it is famous for the flowers named Hagi in Japanese which can be seen the both sides of staircases on the fifth photo.

They were still young, but among them there were some precocious ones which had already some flowers like this.

Maple leaves are also still green hones.

But some are precocious, I found.

In spring this temple is famous for camellias. Some camellia trees bear some solid fruits now.

From this small temple ground, we can view Nara basin widely.


This prospect is one of the big reasons that I 'm fond of this temple.






The mail hall next to the pagoda is under construction

Compared to spring the outlook is clearer due to the air without haze, and it tells us that autumn is just around  the corner.

longing

Walking through beneath the trees...I can see a vegetable garden alongside of a road where I sometimes take a walk with my dog.

In a corner of the garden, some sunflowers are in full bloom.

The following tanka poem was written by Yoko Nagai (永井　陽子１９５１～２０００).

This symmetric verse is so simple that let readers have an indelible impression even after having been read only once.

Simple but I feel something behind her words, and I found that it would be her longing.

ひまはりのアンダルシアはとほけれど とほけれどアンダルシアのひまはり

Although Andalusia of

sunflowers

is a far field;

Though it's faraway,

Sunflowers in Andalusia

Before, I read in some article about the word,longing, and the implication of it.

Longing is "a-ko-ga-re" in Japanese: a（吾）= I, 　ko（此処）= here, ｇare（kareru(離れる）=leave.

That is to say, longing is to leave the place where the person is.

Some people start to travel leaving the safe refuge feeling a compulsion of longing for somewhere else.
And also, there are some cases that something like soul starts to travel with longing for somewhere else from someone who are staying there.

The case of the tanka poem by Yoko Nagai goes for the latter.
And the feeling that readers can read the between the simple lines is travelling of her soul, I think.

I have longing for some unknown place or country once in a while, besides I wish my daily life would be over without any mishap.

The sun will set in behind my neighbour's roof, and on the mountain I can see over the roof they will light soon for those who will be there for enjoying cool evening breeze.

山肌にケーブルカーの道点り　連なる灯り滑りてゆけり

The trail for the little cable car

also being lit up,

Chained lights 

are sliding down

on the mountain surface (haricot)

by the bay and by the lake

My husband and I like Kobe, and occasionally we stroll in the town and the sea side.












The 3,911m Akashi kaikyo(strait) bridge constructed 1988~1998



This time we took a short trip on a cruise ship to Akashi Strait, taking one hour and forty minutes.

Leaving the shore, the sea horizon appeared with gently curve, and I was dazzled by the twinkling sunlight on the almost flat sea.



 

 
Some old movies are showing on TV repeatedly, and sometimes I can notice about what I did not do when I saw them before.

When I saw 1960 film directed by René Clément"Plein Soleil"「太陽がいっぱい」 about one year ago, I was surprised the details contained in the scenes.

For example, when Tom could not put up with Phillip's consecutive insult and killed him on a ship, he ate heartily baguette bread just after his commitment of murder.
And just after Tom killed another man who had a suspicion of him, he digs into a large baked chicken(poulet rôti), as if his big appetite shows his strong libido.

In the final scene, a voice "Telefono"( telephone) is travelling far, conveying the remark of the police.
The word is a foreign language for Tom, and it might be heard by him as a voice from unknown world.
It was just after Tom began to have his confidence about his love for Marge who used to be a lover of Phillip, and murmured, " Plein soleil", looking up at the sky.

Theme Music by Nino Rota & Nini Rosso is here.


a training ship, kaiwo maru

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After one week later we visited Lake Biwa in Ohtu city in Shiga prefecture, taking one hour drive, with my dog, Daisy.

It was a little cloudy and was not bad to take a walk along the lake.



Ohtu city is twin town with Wurzburg.

Open tables are available for customers with dogs

in the restaurant that serves German cuisine.



Lake Biwa reminds me of a tanka poem by Yuko Kawano (河野　裕子１９４６～２０１０）.

たっぷりと真水を抱きてしづもれる昏き器を近江と言へり

It's Ōmi ( Shiga prefecture)

that embraces the fullness

of the still water,

 A somber vessel

or a body Yuko Kawano

Some tanka poet associated the word " Ōmi as a vessel" to a woman's body, and this interpretation became mainstream of the appreciation of this tanka poem.
Works always start to walk independently regardless of the intention of writers.

Yuko Kawano and her husband Kazuhiro Nagata(永田　和宏）started to preside over a tanka association, Tou(搭）that literally means Tower, which has produced excellent tanka poets one after another.

I'm not belong to the association, though I had some opportunities to listen to her discourse.

Just shortly after her taking operation for her cancer about ten years ago, she said "It's so far from the station that I hurried to come here a lot," waving a Japanese fan in her face in a manner of like a girl, at the beginning of her discourse.

In another occasion she spoke out after a panel discussion that it was so exciting that she had a comfortable tiredness, and she would like to have heard more opinions even though it would end up to be a dispute.

Her honest attitude and strait forward speaking were always impressionable.

Almost one year has passed since she passed away of a breast cancer recurrence.

鳥形凧風の動きに乗れるらし一点となりて高く動かず

the bird-shaped kite

seems the ride on the wind----

it becomes a dot

high in the sky,

ceasing to move Yuko Kawano (translated by Amelia Fielden)

pol pot...

あけがたは耳さむく聴く雨だれのポルポトといふ名を持つをとこ　　 大辻　隆弘（１９６０～）

Arousing, my ears caught bleakly

sound of falling drops

pol...pot

...It's the name of a man,

Pol Pot Takahiro Ohtsuji

In this tanka poem the writer overlays an image on another image effectively by an onomatopoeia,pol pot, from drops to a name.

Pol Pot(1925～1998) is a notorious Cambodian prime minister(1976～1997), as it well known.
In genre of tanka, they can sing about almost all events, landscapes, dairy matters and social ones.

In the case of social matters it is difficult to describe something more than mouthing slogans, because writers usually get information through media.




my neighbour's magnolia
taken in early spring



未だ白き紫木蓮の莟の指せる宙（そら）　安否不明者二万人近し　

Whity buds of purple magnolia

pointing up and staring at nothing,

Nearly 20,000 victims

are left up in the air

in northen Japan haricot

Although I don't know if this one came into effect well or not, I could not help making this about aftermath of 3.11 disaster by earthquake and Tsunami, around one month later.

About four months have passed since it occurred, there are still more than 22,000 dead and unexplained disappearances.

倒されて運ばるるとき天心をはじめて見たるレーニンの像　大塚　寅彦（１９６１～）

Being fallen

and being carried on

It saw the centre of sphere

for the first time,

The statue of Lenin Torahiko Ohtsuka

Vladimir Lenin was a Marxist in Soviet, and this tanka is written in a sort of sarcastic way for the famous parson and the statue.

I suppose that many readers would bring up the image of Saddam Hussein's statue that was pulled down in 2003.

As for a statue I also remembered the story " Happy Prince"by Oscar Wilde. It is written with sarcastic point of view, in a different way. (plot is here)

The rainy season around this area was over only this week.

Heaven above, earth below

こぼれたるミルクをしんとぬぐふとき天上天下花野なるべし

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　水原　紫苑（１９５９～）

I'm wiping the spilt milk

in absolute silence

in solitude

May flowers fill the fields

of heaven above and earth below Shion Mizuhara

This tanka poem was very difficult for me to understand for long time.

However, when I thought of 「こぼれたるミルク」（spilt milk） in English, I came to correlate it with the saying "It is no use crying over spilt milk."








Then, I understood that she might regret something in the former lines.

She mentions tremendously broad world as her ideal in the latter lines that make readers imagine the words by Buddha, "Heaven above, earth below, only I am holy."


(花野　flower field might be cherry blossom fields according to traditional interpretation, though I dare to have translated it as fields full of flowers here.)






The former part and the latter one in a verse is well balanced in general, and if this tanka wouldn't be an exceptional, her regret must be profoundly important matter that is related to her fundamental issue.

As far as I can imagine, love is one of the most important and fundamental matters for human beings, though love has its variety from self-centred one to agape.




And, it is quite difficult that we conquer and sublime the sense of possessions when we concern with love, I think.

はじめより持たざるひとつを喪（うしな）ひしもののごとくに胸に秘め置く

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　内藤　明（１９５４～）

I hoard one thing

that I had not have

from the very beginning,

as if I have lost it

the very thing   Akira Naitoh

liquid and solid

注がれてグラスの底の湾曲に沿いてワインは一瞬舞えり 三井　修

Being poured into a glass

wine was cuddling

along the curve

of the bottom

and showed its momentary dance　　
Osamu　Mitsui

This moment is a grand occasion for wine waking up after its long slumber of fermentation.

Osamu Mitsui(1948～） depicted the moment patiently
reducing his vocabulary, and captured it as if wine had its own life.

As I wrote in the previous post, Tanka was the last thirty-one syllables of longer waka, called Chouka, in ancient times.

After Meiji (1868～）era had begun, Tanka tried to form its genre according to the new regime as many other genre of arts tried to do so, absorbing eagerly western culture and arts.

And, the verse with thirty-one syllables(5,7,5,7,7) for Japanese started to be called Tanka, including the meaning of "modern tanka", independently from the ancient ones as representative verse of "waka"(Japanese song) .

角砂糖ガラスの壜に詰めゆくにいかに詰めても隙間が残る 香川　ヒサ

I put sugar cubes

one by one

in a glass bottle

and I find some space between them

whatever way I may try to use 　　
　Hisa Kagawa

Into many Tanka poems by Hisa Kagawa（１９４７～）, her ideas are poured.

The two substance, sugar cube and the container are both useful.
And still there are something as they do not permit the presence of the other party.
Her small plain-speaking might go for other cases.

The two of them by contemporary tanka poets are written being based on their troves out of a whim in their dairy lives, on aqueous fluid and on solid substance.
Then, gaseous matter?
It already has been contained in the both of them, hasn't it?