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From the 2.26 Incident to the Atomic Bombs: Haiku During the Asia-Pacific War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Faubion Bowers (1917-99), a graduate of Columbia University and Juilliard Graduate School of Music, was on his way to Java to explore the music there when he stopped in Japan and accidentally found kabuki. That was in the late 1930s, a few years before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The war over, Bowers served Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Gen. Douglas MacArthur as his aide-decamp and personal interpreter during the early years of the Occupation of Japan (1945-52). When he resigned his military commission with the rank of major he stayed on as a civilian and proponent of uncensored kabuki banned by the Occupation. For this, he was later called “the savior of kabuki” and decorated by the Japanese government.
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References
Notes
1 Hiroaki Sato, with Naoki Inose, Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima (Stone Bridge Press, 2012), 141-2.
2 Alludes to Tsurezuregusa, a collection of essays by Yoshida Kenkō (c. 1283-c.1352). Donald Keene famously translated the title as Essays in Idleness. Columbia University Press, 1967.
3 Yūki Shōji, Haiku Tsurezuregusa, p. 109. Takashi wrote the haiku in 1931. Yamamoto Kenkichi, Gendai haiku (Kadokawa Shoten, 1964), 248.
4 Ibid., 122.
5 In the case of Takamura, see the introductions to Hiroaki Sato, tr., Chieko and Other Poems of Takamura Kōtarō (The University Press of Hawaii, 1980), and Hiroaki Sato, tr., A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of Takamura Kōtarō (University of Hawaii Press, 1992).
6 The family used a different set of Chinese characters than the original family name, though pronounced the same; but the personal name, originally Keichoku, was a concoction. As a result, this haiku name means something like “Three Devils in the West and East.”
7 Saitō Sanki, Kōbe, Zoku Kōbe, Haiguden (Kōdansha, 2000), p. 157. Yamamoto Kenkichi, Gendai Haiku (Kadokawa Shoten, 1964), 394-5.
8 Saitō, Kōbe, Zoku Kōbe, Haiguden, 192.
9 Mitsuhashi Toshio’s afterword to Saitō Sanki shū (Asahi Shimbun, 1984), 347. Saitō, Kōbe, Zoku Kōbe, Haiguden, 162.
10 Hiroaki Sato, tr., ‘ with commentary: Shūōshi’s famous essay, “’Nature’s Truth” and ‘Truth in Literary Arts,’“ Modern Haiku, 38.3, 25-49.
11 Saitō, Kōbe, Zoku Kobe, Haiguden, 162.
12 Saitō, Kōbe, Zoku Kobe, Haiguden, 195.
13 Saitō Sanki shū, 352.
14 Ibid., 213-52, especially 217 and 236.
15 Saitō Sanki shū, 56.
16 See Hiroaki Sato, with Naoki Inose, Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, Chapter 16.
17 Saitō, Kōbe, Zoku Kōbe, Haiguden, 187.
18 Frogpond 18:1, 39-43.
19 ヒロシマや卵食ふとき口開く
20 Saitō Sanki shū, 326.
21 Ibid., 173-4.
22 Ibid., 356. Occupation (U.S. government) censorship of writing on the effects of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been variously documented and described. Among the recent books on this subject are Erin Barnett and Philomena Mariani, ed., Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 (Center of International Photography, 2011) and Greg Mitchell, Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made (Sinclair Books, 2011).
23 Yūki, 175-7.
24 See the preceding chapter, “Gun-smoke Haiku” and Hasegawa Sosei.
25 G. Herwig, “Sights Seen in Singapore,” September 1934 issue of The Living Age. Originally the article appeared, in German, in the Berliner Tageblatt, Berlin National-Socialist Daily.
26 See Hiroaki Sato, “Gyokusai or ‘Shattering like a Jewel’: Reflection on the Pacific War,” online Japan Focus (Feb 2008).
27 Hiroaki Sato, tr., Chieko and Other Poems of Takamura Kotaro (The University Press of Hawaii, 1980), p. xxii. Also see Hiroaki Sato, tr., A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of Takamura Kotaro (University of Hawaii Press, 1992), xxvii-xxix.
28 Hakusen kushū (Ringoya, 1975).
29 Hiroaki Sato, with Naoki Inose, Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima (Stone Bridge Press, 2012), pp. 193-4 and elsewhere.
30 Yūki, 152.
31 John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (Bantam, 1971), 1034-6. The original letter is preserved in the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
32 Hirakawa Sukehiro, Beikoku daitōryō e no tegami (Shinchōsha, 1996), 89.
33 Hirakawa, 106.
34 Senso roku (Hara Shobō, 1968). The word sensō here puns on Chinese characters, so it may sound like “war” but actually means “seaweed.” As Ugaki started his diary on October 16, 1941, he wrote that his diary would be trash. Despite his self-deprecation, his diary is regarded as one of the most important Japanese records of the battle to come out of the Pacific War.
35 Mt. Kaimon, a volcano on the peninsula west of Kanoya across the Kagoshima Bay. So-called, it’s cone-shaped like Mt. Fuji.
36 Ugaki, Sensō roku, 469.
37 Ibid., 551.
38 Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 331-4. Morris gives different translations of the haiku, of course.
39 Hiroaki Sato, with Naoki Inose, Persona, pp. 141-142.
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