Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami

by Akiko Yosano, Sanford Goldstein (Translator), Seishi Shinoda (Translator)

Akiko Yosano's Tangled Hair, published in 1901, had a sensational impact on Japanese literature, and we are pleased to make this highly praised translation (originally published 30 years ago) available once again in a revised Cheng & Tsui edition. Akiko reshaped the tanka, the most popular form of Japanese poetry for 1,200 years, into a modern poetic form. In this new work, her tanka appear in their original Japanese, in roman transliterations, and English translations along with a new preface and notes. Suitable for literature programs and translation courses.

Genres: Poetry, Japanese Literature, Japan, Classics, Asian Literature, Asia, Feminism

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1901

About the author

Sometimes Yosano Akiko. See also 与謝野 晶子.

Akiko Yosano was the pen-name of a Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist, and social reformer, active in the late Meiji period as well as the Taishō and early Showa periods of Japan. Her real name was Yosano Shiyo. She is one of the most famous, and most controversial, post-classical woman poets of Japan.

Reviews

[Nastaran Masoomi · Rating 2 out of 5]

دوستم را شعر
انتهای دردهایش بود
اما مرا
تنها
مرگی سیاه در پیش روست


بله آکیکوی عزیز، در وطن ما هم، امپراطور خود به جنگ نمی‌رود...

[Albus Elown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akiko Yosano, es una de las poetas que da voz a la feminidad en la literatura japonesa, equiparada con Murasaki Shikibu, la poeta en este libro escribe 399 poemas de estilo tanka que principalmente el tema central será el amor.

Los tankas aquí escritos, tienen la regla 5-7-7-7-7 con el cual la poeta busca reflejar su relación con el yo y lo externo, ya que, refleja en la mayoría de los poemas su necesidad de plasmar el tema del amor y como lo vive.

Pese a que pueden ser temas diversos, la temática del amor es muy generalizada gracias a las experiencias que vive la autora y lo que ella observa en el momento, además Yosano en su momento en la forma de escribir dichos poemas se destaca una crítica al mundo patriarcal, una exaltación a la belleza femenina y también a su experiencia con los de sentimientos que la embarcan a tener un amante, y esposo que es Tekkan.

En sus 148 páginas podemos disfrutar de detalles culturales y aspectos esenciales de la belleza femenina como el cabello largo al que hace referencia en varios de los pequeños escritos, así mismo de algunos colores como el Rojo que representa Juventud y amor y el morado que tiene la representación de aspectos que retoma la autora de la "Historia del Genji", este compendio o poemario es una forma universal de entender un poco más del Japón tradicional y sobretodo visto desde el punto de vista femenino, ya que la autora hace una crítica a prácticas feudales que todavía en ese momento existían, lo que hace que está poderosa escritora se vuelva un referente de la feminidad y del feminismo en Japón.

[Nidhi Srivastava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me two months
to read this little book,
But by the end,
I sat down
and wept.

---
What a soundly compiled book. Feminist Tanka poetry. Has no-frills English translations (neither rhyming nor syllable-number-accurate), and also Romaji renditions for people like me who can't yet read Japanese. Yay!

[a ☕︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

3

my long hair
softly loosened in water
—the hidden feelings
of a girl’s heart
i will not reveal.

*

15

in the spring countryside,
land of love
at dawn is it
the scent of my hair?
no, the essence of plum blossoms.

*

18

toward kiyomizu,
crossing gion
under moonlit cherry blossoms
this evening, everyone
passing is beautiful.

*

22

hair unbound from
this hothouse of love
scented with lilies
i dread the night
fading to pale rose.

*

24

the god of night
rides a sheep home
at dawn and as it goes by
—i’ll catch it and
hide it under my pillow.

*

30

sleeping, my arm for a pillow
i heard the sound of a hair snapping
and thought it was
a note from my koto
in my spring night’s dream.

*

79

from the silk gauze
of a young girl’s sleeve
a firefly drifts out,
floating in the
evening breeze

*

168

on the swallow’s wings,
drips spring rain.
let me gather the drops
to comb through
my tangled hair this morning.

*

267

my kimono of silk gauze
soft and white.
how i reflect
a flickering
candle’s light!

*

279

even at nineteen
i thought
the violets would wither
the streams dry up
and my life fade away.

*

312

a small lacquered comb
painted with a scene
of prince genji’s procession
dropped by chance
onto my lord’s lap.

*

326

did we part
yesterday
or a thousand years ago?
even now i feel
your hand on my shoulder.

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

These are honestly some of the worst translations I've ever seen. My senior project in college was translating a couple dozen of these poems from Japanese into English, and this book made me feel so confident in my translation skills. That was, however, the only good thing about it. I've shown this book to several of my English major / poetry friends, and every last one agrees that we have no idea how these translations managed to get published. Yosano Akiko deserves better.

[Books on Asia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have been nice to have the Japanese alongside the translations, which seemed a bit too explicit. The depth of Yosano's poetry should allow the reader to linger over words and meanings but in this case, I felt the translation overshadowed anything implicit. The brevity of the book could have been balanced out by a longer, more insightful introduction.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the 1935 edition, published by Marshall Jones Company. I found the bio at the front more interesting than the poetry itself. That said, these were some of my favorite verses:

*

“Beware! Danger ahead!”
My old self whispers from behind me,
The while my very young self urges,
“On!”

*

I find myself becoming
A miserable coward.
Might I not as well
Be your wife?

*

Strange that you should divide
Our love into two halves,
When I make one perfect whole.

*

[Raya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even through the film of translation that separates the reader and what's written, certain writings find the way to reach us. They retain, despite their compromised decantation. Such writings pierce through that film, like thinly condensed vapor, and fill us with the gentle scent of their passion.

The passionate voice of Akiko Yosano was palpable. It transcended the limitation of language and spoke to me in a verse I am fluent in, the verse of viscerality.

[Grace Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved all the context provided by the notes/intro

“In my bath-
Submerged like some graceful lily
At the bottom of a spring,
How beautiful
This body of twenty summers.”

“Those plum blossoms in the poem
You wrote at parting-
They weren’t on your mind…
Last autumn she was the one
Leaning against this post.”

[Oleh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Я упереджено ставлюся до танок, тому для мене це чи не найкраща збірка поезії, яку я коли-небудь читав. Ніжна і сумна, замріяна і розпачлива, як 23-річна дівчина. Особливого шарму додає неймовірне двомовне видання, що потрапило мені до рук майже випадково. Чудовий переклад (із невідповідним оригіналу, але таким затишним, римуванням), велика кількість пояснень і сама історія появи цієї збірки ясно свідчать про любов і запал, з якими працювала перекладачка.

[Raven]

"Now/
Thinking back/
On the course of my passion,/
I was like one blind,/
Unafraid of the dark."

"Who calls me sinner/
For pillowing his head/
Against my arm?/
The whiteness of this hand/
Not less than God's!"

"Through these pines/
The breeze equally/
On her cheeks and mine,/
Yet how like strangers/
Our thoughts."

[Sara K]

I agree with some of the reviews here that the translations of the poems could have been done better.

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are lots of wonderful things about this book, but I feel that, from a poetic standpoint, the translations are generally inferior to the versions of Yosano's poems that appear in Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese. Here's an example, the first from Rexroth, the second from this edition:

Hair unbound, in this
Hothouse of lovemaking,
Perfumed with lilies,
I dread the oncoming of
The pale rose of the end of night.

Fragrant the lilies
In this room of love;
Hair unbound,
I fear
The pink of night’s passing.

The first version just thrums my soul more.

Having said that, this book is exceptionally well researched [Goldstein talks about the process of preparing this edition here] and the pecan-colored pages that contain the poems in the original Japanese writing are lovely.

Thanks to Goldstein and Shinoda for making this remarkable poetry available in English.

[Kaden Herchenroether · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m going to be honest here: I read this book in around ten minutes, tops, but I didn’t know how to slow down. The poems themselves seemed fairly elementary, and not worth dwelling on. Even when I flipped to the back of the book for their explanations, the paragraphs outlined the simplest of ideas in an overuse of words.

The poems all seemed to repeat the same thoughts over and over again, but maybe there is some appeal in that, maybe there is some genius in being able to reword those feelings.

Spring; wisteria, iris, peony.

Priest, lover, sin.

Kyoto, Osaka.

Pink, white, purple.

Morning, evening.

Sutras, kimonos, hair.

I guess that’s a list of the buzz words. Each poem had an undertone of infidelity and shame, but placed in some flowery landscape. I didn’t really feel moved, or even sad really.

I was rather indifferent to this book. I just feel like it could have been more.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read this collection again and was not disappointed. The information on the author is useful and interesting. The inclusion of the translations, the Japanese characters, and the romaji forms of the poems in this collection allow the reader to play with what the poems sound like and investigate alternative meanings of the characters and words chosen by the author.
The voice of Yosana Akiko is one that remains incredibly compelling. Her choice of images, scenes, and viewpoints in her poems are often distinctly feminine, passionate, and vivid. I'll be re-reading these poems again in a year or so I'm sure.

[Jaime Robles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a selection of 165 poems from Akiko Yosano’s most famous book, a collection of 399 tanka published in 1901. Another short form poem of 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic lines, tanka was the most popular poetic form in Japan for some twelve hundred years. Akiko’s poetry is almost all love poetry, which was an essential part of its appeal, that and the level of candor unknown in Japanese poetry of the time. The introduction gives a historical overview of her life with her lover and later husband, Tekkan Yosano, revealing the rocky relationship between them given his many attractions to other women and her greater popularity as a poet. Their story is more fascinating than the poetry, but the translations from a very different language and expressive style reveal the poems as charming, seductive, and at times ebullient. Akiko was very young when these poems were written, although she did go back and rework the collection in her later years, and youth and young longing are the poems’ most characteristic beauty.

[Jerome Berglund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly I have a bit of a weakness for telenovelas, am particularly drawn to biopics about artists and their great loves, enjoy observing those seeds as they flower throughout famous artworks or pieces of literature (Keats, Byron, Shelley, Rodin, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty, Johnny Cash) and Akino Yosano's torrid, tempestuous life and affairs may set a new standard and raise that bar to astonishing heights. Exquisite poems steeped in unbelievably juicy backstories, this tight translation and thoughtful recounting makes for quite a captivating read. Can see why it so riveted and fascinated a nation, has kept scholars and historians debating and guessing for a century now with no signs of interest waning! For fans of Salad Anniversary, a must read for lovers of tanka, haiku, Japanese culture, and romance and passion generally.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yosano's poetry is gorgeous, but the high rating is also for this edition, which gives you 165 of the tanka from Midaregami (I couldn't find an English translation with all 400), in translated form, original kanji, romanji, and with paragraph-long notes on each. While it was a little tedious having to flip between the tanka and the notes in the back (could have probably been arranged differently) it was nice to have all of that in one volume, plus the 30-ish page introduction which gave good background and context.

"Disregarding right and wrong,
The next world,
Fame,
We face each other,
Loving and loved"

[Isabel Jazmín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Al ser poemas cortos, inevitablemente me recordaron a los haikus, tanto por su brevedad como por la creación de imágenes. Sin embargo, a diferencia de los libros de haikus que he leído en el pasado, en este libro hay tema eje que está presente o que se sobreentiende en todos los textos: la apariencia física y en especial el cabello de la narradora. A veces es un simple adorno, a veces es el motivo de su atractivo pero siempre está en constante relación con su propia percepción y con la que tienen los demás de ella.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable. It was interesting to see the "pioneer" of her craft. By today's standards the poems look very Tame, but if you think of how the relation of men and women was, especially in that Era Japan, she is very much a rebel.

I read this for a challenge "read a book of poetry by a person of color". I also chose this thanks to the Anime/Manga Bungo Stray Dogs which has made me want to explore the Authors behind the characters named after them in the series.

I enjoyed this. 4/5 stars

[Monty Haltiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this 1971 Purdue University Studies version. Simple and effective translations. It included original Japanese versions, phonetic Japanese versions, and notes on each poem.

Bought at a second hand store. It was inscribed with a section of a Walt Whitman poem, Song of the Open Road, from a Hank Maltin to Anne on 5-13-78.

“Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof”

[Arielle Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate the care that was taken in preserving this work and getting to read Akiko Yosano. I only wish there hadn't been the assumption made as to what consists of "allusions meaningless to Western readers and other kinds of specific terminology" (pg 25). Besides that point I also wondered if certain phrases and phrasing were omitted or altered due to not recognizing or directly relating to the author on the basis of gender.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

( 4 stars )

such romantic poetry! such reverence for the tradition yet so modern! i love yosano akiko. overall it’s a good collection with some really beautiful standout tanka. and kudos to her for publishing poems about her husband’s affair with her friend!

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breve y concisa, sooo cunty. Temáticamente se me ha parecido a Margarita Ferreras, pero obsesionada con el pelo. Prometo leerla en español la próxima vez :P
To teach lustful men
a lesson
I was born
with pure skin
and long black hair.

[Iulia · Rating 4 out of 5]

the edition of translations i actually enjoy best!

Which among
the wildflowers
denies its red color?
So why in spring do I feel
like a sinful girl?

(her earlier/midlife stage work makes up for the later imperialist years)

[Matt Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

These love poems are also about loss, memory, desire, and loneliness, and beautifully reveal their truths in a deceptively small space.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Egentligen blir man inte klar med så här enigmatiska dikter, man läser dem om och om igen. Japansk modernism från 1901. Sinnligt, skönt att meditera över.

[anissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 étoiles au lieu de 5 à cause des dégâts émotionnels que ca m'a causé d'écrire mn dossier dessus.

[Anna Smirnova · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book with great poetry

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I am sure things get lost in translation, I did enjoy this book. The notes in the back give insight to each tanka. The introduction was well written as well.