Marco Rice (Tokyo)
The title of Hirata Toshiko’s 2004 book of poetry has two meanings. Shinanoka can be read as either 詩七日(shi-nanoka, “Poem on the seventh day”), or しなのか (shi nano ka, “Is it poetry?”)
The first reading explains the experiment behind the book. After struggling with writer’s block, Hirata decided to write one poem every month, on the seventh day, for two years.
The second meaning prepares the reader for Hirata’s tongue-in-cheek style and use of wordplay. She wants this book to be a conversation and is willing to ask the opening question herself. Shinanoka was critically acclaimed in Japan, winning the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize, but the complete collection wasn’t translated into English until 2024.
Translators Spencer Thurlow and Eric E. Hyett chose to publish the book under the second meaning, wanting to capture the playfulness of the original. They also changed the chapter titles to match. The first chapter is titled “Is It January?” the second “Is It February?” and so on. When twelve poems are finished and the second year begins, the titles begin a new pattern of “Is It January Again?” and “Is It February Again?”
There is not always a connection between the months, or a clear description of the speaker or speakers. Are we reading the experiences of multiple people, or the journey of a single soul? Reading with the latter interpretation, the book becomes a diary of a life we are only allowed glimpses of, a narrator whose image we are left to piece together.
Each poem shows a different side of that life: a playwright who hates her own work, a tenant who can’t get any sleep because of the excavators next door, a daughter reckoning with her mother’s aging, a pedestrian looking at a poster of a lost parrot in Jimbocho. . . all the same person, trying to make it through the year.
In “Is It June?” the speaker hides someone who probably committed a murder, but we focus instead on the tenderness our narrator has for this individual, on a love that has sustained their very life.
“If the unit had only one role, I bet it would work without breaking,” Hirata writes about a malfunctioning air conditioner. But the unit, like all of us, has many roles to fulfill, and so it hurts itself trying.
As the months arrive and depart, the things that occupied all our thoughts and fears one week are all but forgotten the next. Things change, we groan and insist we will never acclimate, and then we do and the world moves on.
The poems float between whimsical and grounded, unraveling the mundane and absurd parts of a life in Tokyo with sharp humor. Without conforming to the same meter or stanzaic form, Hirata uses vivid imagery and storytelling grounded in emotion to write poems that make you want to read them all a second and third time.
The notes on translation at the end of the book are also fascinating, a peek into the trials of translating a text with this level of literary complexity, and an explanation of cultural context that was lost in English.
Is It Poetry? is a quick read and something I’d recommend even to those who don’t usually reach for poetry. Those who can read it in Japanese will assuredly find an even deeper value, but the dedication put into the English translation guarantees its enjoyment for an Anglophone audience as well.
Author Bio:
Born and raised in Seattle, Marco Rice is a first-year JET in Tokyo. On the weekends, you’re more likely to find him outside of the city, smiling at trees.