Born in the 1930s, Shuji Terayama is a crossover stranger who combines multiple identities. Film critic Inuyasha Inuhiko described Terayama in Japanese Cinema and Postwar Mythology: "He was first and foremost a traditional poet, a horse racing critic, and the most disgraceful avant-garde theater director of the 1960s." The public is more familiar with Terayama as a director, and his representative works include "Throw Away the Books and Go to the Street" and "Pastoral Festival of the Dead". In 1967, he founded the experimental theater troupe "Patio Stack", which skillfully used the language of flesh, image, music and poetry to innovate the performance aesthetics of small theaters, and the power of rebellion against traditional values in his works also became an important ideological enlightenment for Japan's post-war generation of young people.
But as Inuhiko Shikata said, Shuji Terayama's side as a poet cannot be ignored. He began publishing poems at the age of 12, organized a national student haiku conference at the age of 17, and won the Newcomer Award for "Short Song Research" at the age of 19, and was known as the "Alchemist of Language". It can be said that his entire youth is closely intertwined with poetry. At the end of World War II, Terayama had just turned ten years old, his father died in battle, his mother sent him to different relatives to maintain the family, and after the war, he followed the frequently changing US military bases to various counties. For Terayama, his youth unfolded on ruins and rubble, and when he looked up, "too many things are dead", even if he wanted to seek new things around him, he could not find what he expected. Under the intense loneliness and depression, haiku and short songs become outlets for the release of thoughts.
In 1957, Terayama published his first collection of works, "Give Me May", which contained early poems, haiku and essays, followed by "There are books in the air", "Blood and Wheat", "Death in the Countryside" and other song collections. At that time, short songs were already in decline in Japan, and few young people wrote short songs, but Terayama was one of the anti-trendists, and he did not officially bid farewell to short songs until the 1970s. He once said that what he wanted to sing was "something clearly identified," so that "as a way of appealing to my own desire for life, I have stored montages, counterpoints, and other methods in my nest within the limits of my ability." In his view, short songs are lonely literature, but if you want to maintain a strong spirit that points to your inner life without sticking to others and traditions, you must cherish this loneliness.
As the driving force behind Shuji Terayama's entry into the music world, writer Hideo Nakai believes that although Terayama's short songs are rarely discussed positively, he has obviously established a unique personal style in his youth, and the youthful image shown in many works is still fresh and fresh to read today. Recently, the Chinese edition of "Shuji Terayama Youth Song Collection" was launched by Urari Culture, and with permission, Interface Culture (ID: BooksAndFun) selected some short songs from it for readers.
<h3></h3>
Stray children
<h3>1</h3>
orphan
I fell asleep with my mouth open
In the scattered brown bread crumbs
In the light
<h3>2</h3>
The light of the underground passage gathers
Wrapped in a hat to bring
Little sparrow
<h3>3</h3>
The square is cold
Next to the Christmas tree
Stray children with his little sister
It's a comparison
<h3>4</h3>
Pull out the radish left in the pit
Sunlight gathers
Bright and deep
<h3>5</h3>
My tomorrow
It will turn into a bird
When orphans see
Cold sunset when burning
<h3>6</h3>
Put the carrot seeds
The wind that blows
Connected
Orphans, sunsets and me
<h3>7</h3>
The height of the sunflower
Almost dry my shirt
Tomorrow will blossom
I want to believe in tomorrow
<h3>juvenile</h3>
This is Paris
It can also be counted as a sad song
With drunken teenagers
Leaning in a cloak
My inner teenager
The Night of No Return
Autumn vegetables are boiled
Stained cheeks
With that
A teenager who hates the sea for no reason
Stay in the lab
But I felt lonely
Winter vertical long glass windows
The figure is distorted
Finally couldn't believe it
The teenager turned and left
With the one who inhabits my heart
The boy who guards the forest
After falling asleep
Listen to an old record together
In the horned bird can be heard chirping
In a small library
Wait for one
A teenager with white ears
The one who has always trusted me
Between the boy who returned and me
Fleas jumped over
Cold land
<h3>Soul, Soul, Soul</h3>
The sun shines on the gas station
Far away
Sleeping love affair
Thoughts did not ripple
There should be
Five dollar coin to listen to the blues
Keep stroking with your injured foot
An empty jar shining in the sun
Orphan with his arms
In the eyes of the little pigeons
The morning glow of winter
When it burns out
Can on the screwdriver
Coagulated blood
If it is the elderly
I want sleep more than the blues
He was not born black
Hence the yearning
Wild tanker truck,
Olive trees, rivers and much more
Solidified on a military blanket
Saliva marks are distinct
Besides
No relics of love were left behind
After escaping from here
Where to go
Railway at night
A moment of blood vessel heat
<h3>8</h3>
Blues across the wall
The accent is heavy
Pour hot water into the washbasin
While singing and
<h3>9</h3>
Give me that
Aborted cat Stefi
Looked at the sea
Days of virginity
<h3>10</h3>
The truck driver leaves
The cat leaves
Gasoline barrels were left behind
Sunny place
<h3>A man who doesn't fly</h3>
I turned to the tall beech tree
Send out inquiries
About the sky
The bluedest place
Passport collection on the 7th floor
In a conference room
A bird was imprisoned
It's me
visible
The dinghy swinging out of the boathouse
Across the river
My dream of running away
To detach from my interior
One day
I would use parasols as wings
Jump from a tall building
Bikes on shelf
And what I finally forgot
My burns
The short songs in this article are selected from the book "Shuji Terayama Youth Songs Collection" and published with the permission of Urari Culture.