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    Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi: A Japanese Voice In English
    Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi: A Japanese Voice In English
    Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi: A Japanese Voice In English
    Ebook336 pages1 hour

    Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi: A Japanese Voice In English

    By Yorifumi Yaguchi

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              Yorifumi Yaguchi is a nationally known poet in Japan. He was a child during World War II, watching while bombs split his countryside to pieces, while the neighbor girl fell prey to soldiers, while an American soldier crept into his home, hoping for rest and safety. Yaguchi's grandfather, a devout Buddhist priest, taught him peaceful ways, urged him to build a healed world. His father taught him the Shinto way, emperor-worship, and the nationalism that fueled Japan's World War II military efforts.           The War focused Yaguchi's poetic abilities instead of destroying them, says Wilbur Birky, the editor of this volume of 150 of Yaguchi's poems in English. Six sections form this collection -- "Silence," "Child of War," "Horizon," "Breath of God,' "Words Made Flesh," and "War and Peace." The poems cover the span of Yaguchi's life -- and his career as a poetry professor and editor, as a Mennonite Christian pastor, and as a nationally recognized, still-practicing poet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Books
    Release dateJun 1, 2006
    ISBN9781680992601
    Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi: A Japanese Voice In English

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      Poetry of Yorifumi Yaguchi - Yorifumi Yaguchi

      Introduction

      The life and work of Yorifumi Yaguchi are unique and, in some respects, represent apparent contradictions. He is a personal witness to war who has become an active peacemaker. He is a compelling Japanese voice in the English language. He is both poet and preacher. He is a Buddhist become Christian and Mennonite.

      Since 1965, Yaguchi has had four overlapping careers: as professor of poetry and American literature at Hokusei Gakuen University, as pastor of several successive small Mennonite fellowships, as poetry editor for the Japanese poetry magazine in English Poetry Nippon, and as practicing poet. He continues in all of these roles to the present, including that of pastoral leadership in a small university fellowship.

      A Brief Biographical Sketch

      Yorifumi Yaguchi was born in 1932 and grew up in Ishinomaki and Yamoto, Japan—north of Tokyo and near the many tiny Matsushima islands, famed for inspiring the great Japanese haiku poets. Many of his nature poems reflect a strong fascination with the way nature inspires the smallest but most profound human feelings and insights. From his father he learned the Shinto way—including both emperor worship and the strong nationalism that drove much of Japan’s military efforts during World War II. Yaguchi’s poems show little attraction to this way, though a number of them deal directly with militarism’s seductive and destructive power both in Japan and throughout the world.

      But the Buddhism of Yaguchi’s maternal grandfather is another matter. His grandfather’s beautiful chanting of the Buddhist scriptures in the temple is a compelling part of Yaguchi’s memory, and echoes of it are still heard in his poetry. His mother had a strong interest in Christianity and attended Christian worship, though she didn’t formally profess a Christian faith. Yaguchi cites his mother’s interest, together with his own study of T.S. Eliot at Tohoko Gakuin University in Sendai, as instrumental in his later conversion to Christian faith and his baptism in 1958. He graduated with a B.A. from Tohoko Gaukuin in 1955, and then took up studies in English at International Christian University in Tokyo, where he did his M.A. thesis on Dylan Thomas and earned an M.A. in education in 1960.

      From 1962-65 he studied at Goshen Biblical Seminary in Indiana, where he received his Bachelor of Divinity degree. While there, he wrote an account of his conversion to Christian faith, The Bible Was Nonsense to Me (published in J.C. Wenger, ed., They Met God, Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1964). His poem Someone, appearing in Section V (page 109) of this collection, is the most dramatic, if quite symbolic, representation of this conversion in his poetry: a word like an ax flung from the heavens to pierce my unprepared heart.

      During Yaguchi’s three years in seminary, he not only studied Bible and theology but was also writing poetry. He published in Goshen’s literary magazine Foolscap, as well as in national church publications such as Christian Living and The Mennonite. During this time he also wrote many of the poems found in his first book, A Shadow (1966). And in seminary he developed his enduring commitment to the way of peace.

      The untimely death by cancer of his first wife, Reiko, in 1970 resulted in the poetic laments found in his second volume of poetry, Resurrection (1972). Two young sons to this marriage were lovingly raised by Yorifumi and his second wife, Mitsuko, whom he married in 1971, and whose contagious love makes her a valuable partner in Yaguchi’s pastoral leadership in Sapporo.

      After studies in the U.S., both sons are now professors of English in Japan. Yobu is Professor of English and Peace Studies at Shirayuri Women’s College in Sendai and is the father of Yori’s one grandson, Isaya, and one granddaughter, Ruka. Yujin is Professor of American Studies at Tokyo University. While Yorifumi Yaguchi is now officially retired from his professorship at Hokusei, he continues to teach poetry part-time at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Sapporo.

      Over the years Yaguchi developed close and significant relationships with many poets, especially American poet William Stafford, with whom he shared a love of nature and a concern for peace. The two corresponded, visited each other a number of times, stimulated each other’s writing, and even collaborated in poetry writing (see page 119).

      Yaguchi also shared a common spiritual calling and poetic vision with Welsh poet R.S. Thomas, whom he visited several times and with whom he corresponded for more than 25 years. Yaguchi has collaborated in the translating and publishing of a book of Thomas’s poems in Japan.

      In addition, appointed as a Fellow by the American Council of Learned Societies, Yaguchi spent a year (1976-77) at SUNY Buffalo, where he was a close associate of American poets Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov, and made significant contact with Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, Alan Ginsberg, and others (see page 118).

      While I was a young boy growing up in Oregon during World War II, vaguely aware of blackouts to protect U.S. soil from potential Japanese bombing raids, Yaguchi was dodging U.S. strafing and bombs by hiding in coal mines and diving into rice paddies. Then came the day of the horrific blast in Hiroshima, and the news of national defeat that the young Yori heard at school in the crackling radio voice of his emperor. Far from

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