Strangely enough, when I read the poetry of Japanese writers, it is difficult to appreciate the charm of those poems in Europe and the United States.
[1] My impression of Shuji Terayama
In fact, I know that Shuji Terayama is still in 2021 — yes, it is because I read poems every night, and in order to find materials, I need to collect works from ancient times to the present, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, that can make me think, "Ah, this poem is so interesting to read."
Shuji Terayama has many "labels", and he graduated from Waseda University, Japan's first private institution, and his common profile lists "famous Japanese playwrights, poets, waka singers, performers, critics, film directors, and representatives of avant-garde theater" in the last century. Some uncommon sources will also indicate that he is also a "famous horse betting commentator"!
In short, at first glance, cattle can't do it.
If you don't know about Japanese horse racing (horse betting) culture, check out the anime "Horse Racing Lady" produced by CY.
The last person who made me feel like too many labels and cattle can't do it was Bob Dylan, who is an American rock and roll, folk singer, songwriter, writer, actor, painter.
Even more importantly, in 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first composer to receive the prize. I remember that year, this matter also caused a lot of controversy.
Just in August of this year (August 13, 2021), Bob Dylan was accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 1965 – not knowing whether it was true or not, or whether the Nobel Prize in Literature would be withdrawn for some reason.
Speaking of Shuji Terayama, his "Fantasy Library" and "Unthinkable Library" are actually more interesting, a bit of a "strange story" feeling, and there is even a unique ghostly feeling of "Edgar Allan Poe Horror Novel" between the lines - the chill on the back is sometimes not when reading the story, but when you catch a glimpse of something around you after reading the story, and suddenly think of it.
However, in order to understand Shuji Terayama himself and his works relatively well, it is necessary to talk about the characteristics of modern And contemporary Japanese literature.
[2] Some of my understandings of Japanese literature
I believe that the work has its mark of the times, just like the Qing Dynasty was full of evidence and did not create.
I myself have read not many books by Japanese authors, but in terms of quantity, they are more Japanese mystery novels - such as shoji Shimada, Keigo Higashino and other masterpieces, and B has only read "Zoo". I couldn't read this book that was blown up by many people, and even once suspected that the writer's later fame was hyped up through some channels - after all, his father-in-law was Oshii Mori, the animation master who supervised the animation "Ghost in the Shell".
As for the books (novels to be exact) by Yasunari Kawabata, Osamu Dazai, Ryunosuke Wasagawa, and Soseki Natsume, I read them even more painfully—because if the reader is a little more sensitive, he can feel the shadowy feeling in the life of a writer.
This sense of shadow, on the one hand, must come from the environment in which children grew up, what parents died, hungry, displaced, etc., on the other hand, it is also the background of the times, from the middle and late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, Japan is a variety of new and old conflicts, internal conflicts are naturally changes, external conflicts are naturally wars.
In short, it is [abnormal].
We can see from the writer's description the darkness, mutilation and pathology of the capitalization bold, coupled with the tradition of "material sorrow" in Japanese aesthetics, so that the text presents a kind of "so bitter", "death is also an eternity", those small characters are abstract [concepts], talking about hissing dreams, with evil strange thoughts, as if they are talking about love and loneliness, but in fact hooking up with the reader to sink.
Looking at the classic image photos of the writer, we can all find the writer's "toothache feeling written on the face". Moreover, there is a kind of "little family atmosphere" between the lines - the story is rarely grand.
Of course, the delicate brushwork of such writers can easily impress women. They are accustomed to conveying their emotions in a beautiful or poignant mood, and women are often attracted to this elegant romance, so that they sink and even are willing to live and die together- well, Dazai Osamu.
The style of these works was more or less inherited by later writers, and Shuji Terayama was one of them.
Shuji Terayama was born in 1935, which meant that there was more chaos and turmoil in the early days of his upbringing; at the same time, with the economic take-off of post-war Japan, the needs of the cultural industry also provided a creative stage for Shuji Terayama - but in the real peace era, everyone has money and leisure, you certainly can't "scream and scream what is going to die" all day long, and the little bourgeois mood that caters to the times flashes in his words.
Therefore, when you look at Shuji Terayama's poetry alone, most of them are mixed with bright sorrow.
【3】About shuji Terayama's Collection of Youth Songs
I really don't recommend that anyone interested in Shuji Terayama start with his poetry collection, but compared to the Fantasy Library, The Library of Unthinking is more interesting to read, or that you can at least figure out what the author is trying to say after reading it.
Although the slogan of the "Teraiyama Shuji Youth Song Collection" has such a paragraph -
What exactly is youth? Lovers, hometowns, suns, peaches, butterflies, motherland, prisons, "alchemists of language" Shuji Terayama sings about the youthful world of young people in a language full of emotion.
However, I couldn't read it.
I can only read the most superficial thing as "mixed with bright sorrows."
Although I can blow something such as "In the "Teraiyama Shuji Youth Song Collection", the text of Shuji Terayama is more like a fairy tale exclusive to young people, he uses all kinds of content that is visible to him to build a dreamy and beautiful image, and he even incorporates the skills of script creation into the poem, so that the poetry will deepen with the reader's taste, as if we watch a movie, the emotion for the characters will be stronger with the plot" - but I can't do it.
People like Shuji Terayama, who have a lot of labels, are destined to be extremely complicated. Complexity means "chaos" and "conflict". It is no exaggeration to say that this kind of personality and extreme intelligence (in fact, you can see it by looking at his photos) is also quite distinctive in attracting fans - if you are deeply attracted to his poems for the first time, you may not let go; on the contrary, if you have no feelings the first time, it is likely that there will be no intersection after that.
At the same time, the poetry of "Shuji Terayama Youth Song Collection" makes me feel that the works in the "Shuji Terayama Girls' Poetry Collection" are more charming—in fact, after making up many of Shuji Terayama's texts, I really can't say "like", maybe Symborska's work is deeper in my heart.
If you think about it, the root cause may be that the "Teruji Terayama Youth Song Collection" contains Japanese "waka".
Tears are made by human beings themselves, the smallest sea.
You see, does this sentence from the "Poetry collection of Teraiyama Shuji Girls" have its own style when it is read?
I really don't understand what "waka" is, but from the following "definition", I can easily understand it as "Japanese version of Lefu poems" and "Japanese versions of Tang poems".
Waka (わか waka) is a type of Japanese poetry that was developed from the japaneseization of ancient Chinese Lefu poetry. This is what Japanese poetry is relative to Chinese poetry. Japanese songs include long songs, short songs, piece songs, and even songs.
With the passage of time, more and more people have written short songs, and now they account for an absolute majority. Singers also mainly refer to people who compose short songs. The short song has five sentences and thirty-one syllables, and is a traditional Japanese stereotyped poem in the order of five-seven-five-seven-seven.
The original Japanese poems were written using kanji, with the meaning of kanji and the sound of kanji. On this basis, poems with Japanese characteristics were produced. Because Japan is called the Yamato nation, and because it wrote poems to be sung, it was called a waka.
So the core question came out. Tang poems and Song poems are translated into other languages, can they still retain their original format and charm?
I thought, no.
The same is true of Japanese waka, and those who may understand Japanese can easily understand the magic of Shuji Terayama's original text. But the translation, there is no way to restore the rhyme and flavor in the song.
Let's use the drama as an example. The "Mogamikawa" stem comes from the anime work "Everyday", which is a few sentences in the haiku (reading "card" instead of "non", I also checked the dictionary) composed by Yuko Aisyo when she was punished for standing in the corridor. But people like me who don't know Japanese at all have a hard time understanding the [laugh points] in the original work, just knowing this stem, that's all.
Although it will also laugh silently, the mood is too bad.
Finally, the identities of playwright, poet, wagami, critic, film director, etc., sometimes need to be viewed separately.
Because of the form of the poem, the poet can indulge in freedom, showing a side that is not seen in other fields. Although I can't read "Shuji Terayama Youth Song Collection", I can feel that it is very unusual! At the same time, take the time to read Shuji Terayama's other works, so that you can read it as a more three-dimensional talent!
Bless you can read the beauty of unexpected encounters from this song collection!