The poem ‘Great Aso’ (Ō-Aso) was written by poet, editor, and literary critic Miyoshi Tatsuji (三好達治) in 1937 but reads as though it were older. Like much of Miyoshi’s poetry, it’s a long form, free verse poem written in a highly literary style that recalls classical Japanese. The poem paints a melancholic, aeonian picture of Aso’s natural beauty, and the repetition of certain words and phrases throughout gives it an almost meditative, hypnotic quality.
‘Ō-Aso’ is described as Miyoshi’s ‘representative work of colloquial free verse’ in the Modern Poetry Appreciation Dictionary (近代詩鑑賞辞典) and appears in many Japanese textbooks, so it’s well known, even today. It also features in S3 of Psycho-Pass and the recently released Psycho-Pass: PROVIDENCE.
雨の中に馬がたつてゐる
ame no naka ni uma ga tatteiru
A horse stands in the rain
一頭二頭仔馬をまじへた馬の群れが 雨の中にたつてゐる
ittou nitou ko’uma wo majieta uma no mure ga ame no naka ni tatteiru
A herd of horses with one, two foals stand in the rain
雨は蕭々と降つてゐる
ame wa shoushou-to futteiru
The rain falls, ceaseless and silently
馬は草をたべてゐる
uma wa kusa wo tabeteiru
The horses are grazing
尻尾も背中も鬣も ぐつしよりと濡れそぼつて
shippo mo senaka mo tategami mo gusshori-to nuresobotte
Tails and backs and manes drenched through with the rain
彼らは草をたべてゐる
karera wa kusa wo tabeteiru
They are grazing
草をたべてゐる
kusa wo tabeteiru
Grazing
あるものはまた草もたべずに きよとんとしてうなじを垂れてたつてゐる
aru mono wa mata kusa mo tabezuni kyoton-toshite unaji wo tarete tatteiru
Yet another stands vacantly, head hanging, not even grazing
雨は降つてゐる 蕭々と降つてゐる
ame wa futteiru shoushou-to futteiru
The rain is falling, falling ceaseless and silently
山は煙をあげてゐる
yama wa kemu wo ageteiru
Smoke rises from the mountain
中嶽の頂きから うすら黄ろい 重つ苦しい噴煙が濛々とあがつてゐる
nakadake no itadaki kara usura-kiroi omokkurushii fun’en ga moumou-to agatteiru
From Mt Nakadake’s peak volcanic fumes—pale yellow, ponderous—are densely rising
空いちめんの雨雲と
sora ichimen no amagumo to
Rising into a sky shrouded by rainclouds
やがてそれはけぢめもなしにつづいてゐる
yagate sore wa kejime mo nashi ni tsutzuiteiru
That continues on without cleft in ken
馬は草をたべてゐる
uma wa kusa wo tabeteiru
The horses are grazing
艸千里浜のとある丘の
kusasenri-hama no toaru oka no
Upon a hill on the shores of Kusasenri,
雨に洗はれた青草を 彼らはいつしんにたべてゐる
ame ni arawareta aokusa wo karera wa isshin ni tabeteiru
Its greensward washed clean by the rain, they are eating single-mindedly
たべてゐる
tabeteiru
Eating
彼らはそこにみんな静かにたつてゐる
karera wa soko ni minna shizuka ni tatteiru
They are, all of them, standing there quietly
ぐつしよりと雨に濡れて いつまでもひとつところに 彼らは静かに集つてゐる
gusshori-to ame ni nurete itsumademo hitotsu tokoro ni karera wa shizuka ni atsumatteiru
Drenched through by the rain, evermore in a single place, they are gathered quietly
もしも百年が この一瞬の間にたつたとしても 何の不思議もないだらう
moshimo hyakunen ga kono isshun no aida ni tatta-toshitemo nan no fushigi mo nai darou
Were a hundred years to pass in the space of this one moment, it would be not the least bit strange
雨が降つてゐる 雨が降つてゐる
ame ga futteiru ame ga futteiru
Rain is falling, the rain is falling
雨は蕭々と降つてゐる
ame wa shoushou-to futteiru
The rain is falling, ceaseless and silently
Notes on the translation:
- Miyoshi himself indicated that the poem’s title is to be read ‘Ō-Aso’ as no such place name exists (Aso does, though).
- 19 of the poem’s 22 lines end in the present progressive tense ‘~teiru’ (~てゐる) verb conjugation. What’s more, Miyoshi uses the more archaic ‘wi’ (ゐ) as opposed to the modern ‘i’ (い) as a visual cue that heightens the poem’s classical feel. This repetition has been cited as the poem’s most iconic feature and gives the work a calming, almost hypnotic vibe. Some critics have also speculated that the repetition of this verb conjugation creates a sense that the distant passage of time spanning past, present, and future is occurring simultaneously, as the present tense usage of ‘~iru’ (~ゐる) can describe both that which is currently happening and recurring events.
- Also contributing to the poem’s archaic feel is the use of full-sized ‘tsu’ (つ), ‘yo’ (よ), etc. where they would otherwise be half-sized (っ、ょ) according to modern convention. It doesn’t actually change the way any of the words are pronounced, just the way that they’re written. For instance, ‘tatteiru’ (たつてゐる > たっている) and ‘kyoton’ (きよとん > きょとん). (For more on this, see this Wikipedia article on kyū kanazukai.)
- The kanji he uses for ‘foal’ (仔馬) in L2 are also not the standard ones used today (子馬), though they’re read the same and largely interchangeable.
- Likewise, the word for ‘mixed in [among]’ would be ‘majieta’ (交えた) in modern Japanese, however Miyoshi uses the more archaic orthography ‘majiheta’ (まじへた) — though, again, the pronunciation would be the same (i.e. the ‘h’ sound would be all but silent).
- What I’ve translated as ‘ceaseless and silently’ in L3, L9 & L21 is the adverb ‘shoushou-to’ (蕭々と). On its own, ‘shoushou’ can mean dreary, mournful, plaintive, lonely, etc. but when used to describe rainfall it refers to a fine, misting rain that falls almost silently and constantly for hours on end.
- The word he uses to describe how thoroughly wet the horses are in L3 & L19 — ‘gusshori-to’ (ぐつしよりと) — is archaic (enough so that you’re unlikely to find it in a modern dictionary) as well as informal, contrasting with the above-mentioned ‘shoushou-to’ (蕭々と) and ‘moumou-to’ (濛々と), which I’ll address below. As a rule, words that use kanji — particularly two or more kanji — are considered more rigid-sounding and formal, whereas words using exclusively hiragana have a softer, more informal (or even feminine) feel. This has to do with the origin and initial usage of the two writing systems...but that’s another post entirely.
- Again in L5, the word he uses for ‘soaked through’ — ‘nuresobotte’ (濡れそぼつて) — is also archaic and won’t be found in most modern dictionaries.
- The word I’ve translated as ‘vacantly’ in L8 — ‘kyoton-toshite’ (きよとんとして) — is also informal sounding, contrasting with the more formal kango ‘shoushou’ and ‘moumou.’ The word could alternately be translated as ‘dazedly,’ ‘listlessly,’ ‘blankly,’ ‘torpidly,’ etc.
- In that same line, ‘head hanging’ is actually in the active voice; a more literal translation would be: ‘hanging [his/her] nape.’
- By the same token, L10 is written in active voice, which sounds odd in English but is perfectly natural in Japanese. Rather than smoke rising from the mountain, the literal translation would be something like, ‘the mountain is raising/giving off smoke.’
- Side note on geography: Nakadake (中嶽) is the active volcano at the heart of Mt Aso, though the kanji Miyoshi uses for it are not the standard ones. Nakadake (中岳), Takadake (高岳), Nekodake (根子岳), Eboushidake (烏帽子岳), and Kishimatake (杵島岳) are collectively referred to as the Five Peaks of Aso (阿蘇五岳).
- The word I have as ‘ponderous’ in L11 is ‘omokkurushii’ (重つ苦しい) which is a compound adjective that combines the words ‘heavy’ and ‘painful/strenuous.’ Alternate translations include ‘oppressive,’ ‘suffocating,’ etc.
- Like ‘shoushou-to’ the adverb ‘moumou-to’ (濛々と) which appears in L11 is a kango and can mean either ‘dense/thick’ or ‘vague/dim.’ Here, it’s being used to describe the way the volcanic smoke is rising from Mt Nakadake — in thick billowing clouds.
- L12 begins with ‘sora ichimen’ (空いちめん) where ‘sora’ means ‘sky,’ ‘men’ is a counter used to count flat surfaces, and ‘ichi’ means ‘one.’ In other words, the entire surface of the sky.
- The line (L12) ends with the particle ‘to’ (と) which, on its own, means ‘and.’ Here, however, it’s a truncation of ‘to-nari’ (となり), i.e. the infinitive of ‘to become.’ Following on the heels of L11, it’s describing the way the dense volcanic fumes are rising from the mountain and bleeding into a sky covered over with rainclouds until the two become indistinguishable.
- L13 was the line I agonised over most: “That continues on without cleft in ken.” I’ll break it down here in the order that the words appear in the original Japanese, because there’s a lot going on.
- In modern Japanese, the word ‘yagate’ (やがて) is a temporal word that can mean 1) soon; presently; in a short time; then 2) in due time; when the time comes 3) almost; nearly 4) after all; ultimately. That’s already a broad range of potential meanings, but then, in classical Japanese, ‘yagate’ is not only temporal but spatial as well. In other words, it’s being used here to mean ‘in that manner, continually’ and is referring to the process of the volcanic fumes rising, melding into the rain clouds, and spreading until they cover the entire sky.
- Next comes ‘sore wa’ (それは), where ‘sore’ means ‘that’ and ‘wa’ is a subject marker. In English, the word ‘that’ comes at the very beginning of the sentence, which is misleading but arguably replicates the slight ambiguity of the original Japanese. In English, we use ‘that’ not just as a determiner (e.g. ‘that book’), but as a relative pronoun (e.g. ‘the book that I read’). So, when ‘that’ comes at the beginning of the line, it’s easy to think it’s indexing ‘sky’ in the previous line. However, ‘that’ is actually pointing more broadly at the process of the fumes rising into the clouds. An alternate, less literal translation would be: ‘This continues on without cleft in ken.’
- The word ‘kejime’ (けぢめ) means ‘demarcation; distinction’ but is being used here to mean something closer to ‘gap; break’ (in the cloud cover). Again, Miyoshi goes with more archaic kana usage: in modern Japanese, this would be written けじめ. The phrase ‘kejime mo nashi ni’ (けじめもなしに) means ‘without even a gap/break.’ I’ve translated this as ‘without cleft in ken,’ playing with alliteration as a way of mimicking the repetition of other sounds and phrases throughout the poem.
- I’ve used ‘ken’ here in the sense of ‘range of vision or sight’ as a way of (hopefully) replicating the feel ‘yagate’ gives the line in its original Japanese.
- Again, the kanji Miyoshi uses for the ‘shores of Kusasenri’ or Kusasenri-hama (艸千里浜) in L15 are not the standard ones: its proper name is Kusasenrigahama (草千里ヶ浜), though it’s also sometimes called just Kusasenri (草千里).
- I’ve inserted the word ‘upon’ at the start of L15 in the interest of connecting it to L16 in a way that obeys English grammatical structure, but this word doesn’t actually appear in the original Japanese. In Japanese, descriptive noun phrases come before the nouns they modify, rather than after, as they do in English. So L15 is only the first half of a noun phrase describing the grass being eaten by the horses (Kusasenri + possessive particle + a certain + hill + possessive particle).
- For that matter, if I were going for a literal translation rather than a poetic one, the ‘to aru ~’ (とある) in L15 should be ‘a certain’ hill instead of simply ‘a’ hill.
- Similar to ‘maji[h]eta’ in L2 and ‘kejime’ in L13, the word I’ve translated as ‘washed clean’ in L16 — ‘arawareta’ (洗われた) — has been written with more archaic orthography: ‘arahareta’ (洗はれた), though it’s pronounced the same. A legacy of this convention that still exists in modern Japanese is the subject marker ‘wa,’ written with the hiragana ‘ha’ (は), which appears in the L13 analysis.
- The word Miyoshi uses for a ‘single place’ in L19 is ‘hitotsu tokoro’ (ひとつところ), which literally means ‘one place,’ but it’s more common to say ‘hitotsu no tokoro.’ Eliding the ‘no’ (a possessive particle) gives it a more literary feel.
- L20 (‘Were a hundred years to pass...’) is the most famous line in the poem. Literary critics have said that the inclusion of this one line elevated the poem from “accomplished” to a masterpiece.
- L20 ends with the word ‘darou’ (だろう) — written ‘darau’ (だらう) archaically — which makes the phrase a supposition. An alternate translation would be: ‘Were a hundred years to pass in the space of this one moment, it should be not the least bit strange,’ or — more colloquially — ‘If a hundred years were to pass in the space of this one moment, it wouldn’t be at all strange, I suppose.’
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