The release of a collection of Japanese poems

The book “Contemporary Japanese Poetry,” compiled and translated by Hashem Rajabzadeh, has been published.

According to cinemadrame, this book, consisting of 255 pages, with a print run of 330 copies, is priced at 260,000 Toman and has been released by Marvarid Publications.

In part of the introduction, we read: Modern Japanese poetry was founded at the end of the 19th century. During this time, Japan was engaged in its first encounters with Western civilization. After centuries of isolation and weaving in a closed yet productive culture with profound and rich social foundations, the intelligent and curious Japanese, eager to discover and apply new thoughts and methods, found themselves confronting the non-Oriental world of machines, military power, and the flourishing sciences and dynamic Western thinking. With the rise of the Meiji era (Meiji, Emperor of Japan from 1867 to 1912), which is considered the period of modernization in Japan, Western ideas and methods were carefully tested in both experimental and theoretical fields. Among the books translated during this period, there are collections of poems by European and American poets, marking the beginning of a new movement that aligned with events taking place simultaneously in the West.

The new poetic styles in Japan, as in the West, were a response to the stagnation of traditional Japanese poetry, which had remained confined within rigid conventions.

Poetic style cannot be separated from the quality of language. Compared to Indo-European languages, the Japanese language has less poetic harmony. In Japanese poetry, there is no meter and rhyme, as is found in Persian poetry. Since Japanese has only five vowel sounds, repeating them in succession would create a monotonous, tiring rhythm. However, in Japanese poetic language, there is a certain rhythmic emphasis on the words.

In a poem featured on the back cover of the book, we read:

From the day I opened my eyes to the world,
I learned only one thing:
To build bridges in the world, as much as I can, and the more, the better.
In the morning light,
I build a bridge over the short distance between two buildings.
I build a bridge that connects hearts,
Hearts of people hurrying by, aimlessly.
But no hand of theirs can fill the distance between hearts
That are completely severed. (Koichi Kehara)