In pre-modern Japan, according to Andrew Campana’s introduction to this new anthology, ‘it would have been absurd to consider poetry as something at all separate from visuality’. The first entry in the book is an ink drawing of a crow on a bare tree branch, its head tucked under its wing, accompanied by the text of a haiku by Basho. In Adam Kern’s translation the poem reads:
Upon withered bough
a crow has come to its rest…
autumn twilight
Campana provides a valuable summary of ways in which text, image, and even sound combined in traditional cultural practice. But modernist and contemporary visual poetry in Japan, he says, does not represent a ‘“return” to an older tradition’. Rather it emerges from the attempts of artists to grapple with contemporary realities, including the trauma of WWII.
Despite the dates on the cover, the work featured in the anthology, with the exception of the Basho poem, all dates from the 20th and 21st centuries. Taylor Mignon, the editor, covers a wide array of practices in his selection. We have examples of asemic writing, calligraphy, collages, photographs of constructed objects and more.
These kinds of practices, Campana argues, have ‘always been central to the story of poetry in Japan, but remained criminally underrepresented in collections and anthologies, both in Japanese and in translation, not fitting into the normative idea of what a “poem” is supposed to be’. The present anthology aims to set the record straight by showcasing a variety of works both by Japanese authors and by non-Japanese poets with connections to Japan.
There are many expressive pieces in the volume. ‘View From A Balcony Of An Early Summer Street’ (1925), by Hagiwara Kyōjirō, uses a diagrammatic layout and a mix of text and other visual elements to suggest a lively street scene. Yamamoto Kansuke’s ‘Buddhist Temple’s Birdcage’ of 1940 is a photo of a telephone handset inside a cylindrical birdcage, perhaps reflective of the suppression of opposition to the war by the Japanese authorities. Niikuni Seiichi’s piece ‘Rain’ from 1966, suggests a relentless downpour, and can be read as evoking the radioactively contaminated rain which followed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A section of the book is devoted to work by members of VOU, a group founded by the poet Kitasono Katué in 1935. His pioneering work in abstract and visual poetry influenced a younger generation of poets. The anthology includes work from the 1950s through to the 1970s. In 2022 Mignon published an anthology specifically about VOU with Isobar Press: VOU: Visual Poetry, Tokio, 1958–1878. The pieces included in this new anthology are by practitioners not represented in the Isobar book.
A group of Japanese book designers, all associated with visual poetry, are celebrated in another section, which draws on the collection of scholar and translator John Solt, who provides a short introduction to the work.
Eric Selland’s asemic calligraphy in the ‘contemporary’ section is interesting, and Kunimine Teruko’s ‘Kusa (grass)’, consisting of the character for ‘grass’ in green ink, the top horizontal bar extending towards the left and right margins, has a pleasing, resonant simplicity. Adachi Tomomi’s AI generated 3D poetry is also intriguing. You can view examples of his work here.
The inclusion of non-Japanese writers is very much in the spirit of the Japanese avant garde, which from its beginnings in the 20th century sought to build international links, and which was in turn influenced by like-minded writers and artists in the US and Europe. Campana, in the introduction, mentions the composer Toru Takemitsu. In the 1960s Takemitsu created four visual scores, including for Ring (1961). Takemitsu was conscripted into the Japanese army as a teenager and the horrors of the war left him with a deep revulsion for traditional Japanese culture. His early compositions were influenced by Western composers like Schoenberg, Webern and Stravinsky. John Cage was also an influence and it was Cage’s interest in Buddhism which eventually led Takemitsu to re-evaluate Japanese musical traditions. The composer’s visual scores don’t appear in the anthology, but they easily could have.
Visual Poetry of Japan provides a useful introduction to a range of practices which break with the idea of poetry as a block of text on a page. There are a growing number of anthologies focused on concrete and visual poetry and this volume is a commendable addition. For readers already familiar with concrete and visual poetry, the book makes available work not included in other recent anthologies.
Simon Collings 19th February 2024
