essayists-from-japan

"As for the revelation of the Semitic race, which comes under the former category, such an address was made solely with divine authority and without any regard to human thinking, seems to be filled with many contradictions. We are, frankly speaking, in blank dismay when we come across such fundamental doctrines of Christianity as the conception of the Virgin Mary and the Resurrection of Christ. Is there no other teaching to persuade us a little further?"

"Tenrikyo is a unique faith which is neither theistic nor pantheistic. The Kami (Deity) of Tenrikyo, “Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto,” is, to speak exactly, umgreifend and all the universe lives in His bosom. The Kami of Tenrikyo may be perceived as a crossing of pantheism plus determination of space, and theism plus determination of time. A pantheistic god is immanent, while a theistic god transcendent. But an umgreifend god is both immanent and transcendent. A pantheistic god is rational, while a theistic god irrational. An umgreifend god, is, however, transrational. An intellectual understanding of such a god is possible up to a certain point, but beyond it. In other words, a relative man is able to comprehend only a part of the functions of an absolute god. The mysterious god who is beyond human intellectual understanding is one who gives us light from far beyond the limitation of human thinking. Such being the case, the god is not one which blinds modern scientific people but which lights up their way. Once they lose sight of the light, they will fall into a dark world. Human civilization will be ruined unless supported by such a god."

"A transcendent deity will speak what man cannot understand, and man is forced just to obey. A pantheistic deity will never speak to man, but will leave all to human thinking. However, in the case of the umgreifend deity He and man are enabled to talk with each other. The umgreifend deity, appealing to human wisdom, will try to win persuasion. But after all He both negates and transcends human wisdom, and discloses His true intention in a way that man cannot perceive."

"It may be that Japan is only a speck on a world map drawn by Europeans, but the country consisting of a chain of islands has played and is still playing an important part because of its situation lying east of the continent in the Pacific Ocean. From a cultural point of view Japan is an eastward limit of penetration, and a treasure-house, so to speak, in the history of world civilization. Another important thing is that Japan stands out as the first country in Asia which adopted modern mechanical civilization and carried it to the Asiatic Continent."

"Buddhists try to escape from their life, while Christians attach greater importance to their life in heaven than to that on earth. As for believers of Tenrikyo, however, the greatest emphasis is always put on this life on earth. Neither life nor death can exist independently of God the Parent."

"“Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto” god is the umgreifend Deity, both pantheistic and theistic, both immanent and transcendent."

"It may safely be said that the Japanese people embrace all of the greatest religions of the world. In Japan there are various stages of belief, from primitive Shamanism to Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, Mohammedanism and Shintoism originating in Japan. And they co-exist with no bloody strife, each having its own ardent followers. There is nothing like such religious wars as were seen in European history."

"A transcendent deity is not connected with man, while an immanent deity is connected with man. An umgreifend deity is, however, both connected and disconnected with man. To speak in greater detail, the umgreifend deity reveals Himself not only to His believers but to those who wish to know Him. He tries as far as possible to appeal to human wisdom, gives persuasion and satisfaction and waits anxiously in the expectation of human evolution."

"The deity who guides us must, and must not, be among us mankind; He must be both immanent and transcendent. In other words, He must be the Deity who renders satisfaction to human wisdom on one hand, and leads us up to things too high to give satisfaction to it on the other. Again, He must be apparent as well as hidden. Such a deity is umgreifend. It may well be said that a pantheistic god is apparent while a transcendent god is hidden."

"The Japanese nation is, generally speaking, so generously disposed towards any system of thought that varying contradictions are kept on with no inconvenience whatever; it seems as if the Japanese nation were gifted with special capacity for tolerance. For instance, religions present an apt example of tolerance on the part of the Japanese nation."

"It may be said that pantheism and theism in world civilization were derived from the Aryan and Semitic races, respectively. These two still form the backbone of the Western ideas which have been dominating the world since the Industrial Revolution, which ended in favor of a mechanical civilization. And it is natural that the people of the Western sphere of civilization view from no other perspectives than these two. As for us people of the East, we have traditions quite different from those of the West, and view from perspectives unlike those of Westerners."

"God the Parent “Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto” may be called an “umgreifend Deity” and likened to a circle of infinite diameter."

"I think that the role of a writer is to listen to the voices of the voiceless. It’s my job to listen to the voices of the spirits of those who die in the midst of discrimination, poverty, and loneliness, unable to bring anyone’s attention to their suffering. We can’t save the dead, but by listening, we can give comfort to their spirits. By listening to their suffering, we can bandage their burning, bleeding skin, no matter how many tears that bandage might have or how patched together it might be."

"My grandfather was born and raised in a small town called Miryang in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea. He was a long-distance runner on the Japan National Team in Korea, which was then a colony of Japan. He was likely to get a spot on the team for the Tokyo Olympics, which was scheduled to be held in 1940, but then the Olympics was canceled due to World War II. The Korean Peninsula was liberated from colonial rule by Japan’s defeat in the war, but the joy of independence was covered over by ideological confrontations. Due to the Korean War that broke out in 1950, Miryang, where my grandfather’s family lived, became a battlefield where residents informed on and killed each other. My grandfather’s 23-year-old brother, who was a leader of the student movement, was hit in the leg while running in the schoolyard and taken away by the police; his whereabouts are still unknown. My grandfather was also accused of being a communist and was imprisoned, but just before his execution he broke out of jail and escaped to Japan on his own. My grandmother boarded a small fishing boat with her four children, including my mother, and smuggled them into Japan as refugees. When my grandfather, who due to the war ran off with just the clothes on his back and lived a life with what seem like constant emergency crash landings, realized that he had cancer and was going to die soon, he went back to the small town in Korea where he was born, and he died there at age 68."

"As a novelist, my job is to play a role as an endoscope to look inside of a person, while also showing him or her with an external camera."

"I’m often asked, why would you move where there was a nuclear accident on purpose? I started writing novels when I was eighteen years old, and since then, in interivews, I’m always asked, “Why do you write? Who are writing for?” And I always answer, “I write for the people who don’t belong anywhere.” That might have roots in the fact, in the Korean War, my family left Korea and came to Japan, that my family has wandered from place to place, that I was expelled from school, so I come from a place of not belonging, and perhaps I started writing in order to make a place where I belonged in the world of novels and plays. That’s why I write for people who don’t belong."

"I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there’s the next, as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end."

"The word "interview" is written as taking material. If you come in contact with it like you want to take such material, it will be transmitted. So, instead of taking material, you are I think it's all about listening with the desire to know and listen to your story."

"[S]ome of my poems generally belong to a sensory melancholy, while certain others belong to a meditative melancholy. But, whichever it may be, the rhythm that I really want to convey is not it. It is not these "sensory things" or "idealistic things." Those things are no more than the costumes of my poetry. The essence of my poetry—that fragrant throb of my heart pulsing that becomes the motive of my poetry-making—lies above all else in the charm of the tender sound of the fife. It lies in the pitifulness of yearnings with no apparent cause for the world of reality. Thus I breathe into the fife's mouth hole, trying to play a mysterious and sensuous life."

"Some people say my poetry is sensual. It may be that some are like that. Still, a correct view opposes it. Nothing "sensual" can be the motive of my poetry. It is a chord over the keynote. Or an ornament. I am not a man who can get intoxicated on the senses. What I truly try to sing of is different. It is that atmosphere—the sound of a fife you hear on a spring night. It is not the senses, not a passion, not an excitement, but simply the nostalgia of a cloud that quietly drifts in the shadow of a soul. It is a tearful yearning for a reality far, far away."

"[T]o me poetry is neither a mystery nor a religion. Even less is it "a life-or-death work" or "a sacred way of ascetic training." It is nothing more than "a sad consolation" for me."

"I love human beings. Nevertheless I fear human beings."

"My personality, loneliest in the world, is calling loudly to an unknown friend, my obsequious strange personality, looking shabby like a crow, is trembling on the corner of a deserted, winter- withered bench."

"This utterly unknown dog follows me, shabby, limping on its hind leg, a crippled dog's shadow. Ah, I do not know where I'm going, in the direction of the road that I go, roofs of tenements are being pelted pelted in the wind, in a gloomy, empty lot by the road, bone-dry grass leaves are pliantly thinly moving."

"The air of the countryside is gloomy and oppressive, the touch of the countryside is gritty and sickening, when I sometimes think of the countryside, I'm tormented by the smell of animal skin coarse in texture.I fear the countryside, the countryside is a pale fever dream."

"Of the lukewarm unpleasantness of the sensation of a man at such a moment a disastrous crime is born. A heart afraid of crime is the forerunner of a heart that gives birth to a crime."

"Why can't one love with one's body those whom one loves with one's heart?"

"Here and there, I see farmers' melancholy faces. The faces are dark, looking only at the ground. On the ground, spring, like smallpox, is ponderously erupting."

"Since my tender boyhood I've been tormented by my soul's nostalgia with no apparent cause. My night bed was whitishly wet with tears, when the day broke the intestines of my sentimentality were scratched apart by the rooster's voice. For days I ran around the edges of the spring field aimlessly in love with a member of the opposite sex, hugging a tree trunk alone, singing "The One Who's in Love with Love.""

"Thus I make poetry. Like the moths that swarm around a lantern, deceived by the phantom of certain flowery mysterious sentiments, trying to touch the essence of invisible reality, I vainly flap, flap my wings as fragile as sponge cake. I am a pitiable fantasizing child, the sad fate of a moth."

"Sometimes I escape from everyone and become solitary. And my heart loving everyone becomes tearful. I always like, while walking on a deserted lonely beach, to think of the crowds in the distant city."

"[Poetry] is the voice of a blue heron calling in the marshes of life, the sound of a wind darkly whispering over the reeds on a moonlit night."

"I think of a mystery hard to solve universal life's instinct's solitary eternally eternally solitary a sentiment ever so flowery."

"I have no more hope no more honor no more future. And irretrievable remorse alone scurried away like a field mouse."

"Ah in this landscape that trails shadows my soul clutches an itchy terror like a ship that has come from a harbor it has come crossing the islands with wraiths in the distance it's neither wind nor rain all of it a dark fear clinging to the sufferings of love and lust and at the dull flute-sound that a snake charmer makes my crumbling shadow wept lonely."

"From cause-and-effect's destiny's fixed law's miserable dry plate of a landscape on which despair has frozen run away the pale shadow."

"When I think of poetry, I feel its fierce human suffering and its joy."

"I want to nail my own gloomy shadow into the moonlit earth. Lest the shadow follow me forever."

"Poetry is neither a mystery nor a symbol nor a demon. Poetry is nothing more than a lonely consolation for the owner of a sickly soul and a man of solitude."

"The human lodges collapsed on the ground are asleep like huge spiders. In lonely pitch-dark nature animals tremble with fear and threatened by some Dream Demon are howling sadly pale."

"A person, individually, is always terribly lonely forever and ever."

"Poetry is the intellect's product of one second. A certain type of sentiment that one ordinarily has touches something like electricity and for the first time discovers a rhythm. This electricity is, for the poet, a miracle. Poetry is not something anticipated and made."

"When I think of poetry, I become teary, without meaning to, because of the wretchedness of human sentiments."

"The dog that howls at the moon howls suspicious and fearful of his own shadow. To the dog's ailing heart, the moon is an ominous puzzle like a pallid ghost. The dog howls far into the distance."

"The past is a painful memory to me. The past was an ominous nightmare of frustrations, inaction, and a suffering body and flesh."

"Where is our happiness? The more we dig the sand in the mud the deeper the fountain of sorrow becomes, doesn't it? The spring wavering in curtains' shadow has gone away into the distance, rocking on a rickshaw."

"Body half buried in sand, still it's lolling its tongue. Over this invertebrate's head, pebbles and brine rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle, flowing, flowing, ah so quietly as a dream flowing."

"During the long illness and pain, spiders have covered his face with webs, his body below the waist has faded like a shadow, a bush has grown above his waist, arms rotten, body all over, truly messed up, oh, today again the moon is out, the daybreak moon is out, and in the opaque light like a lantern a deformed white dog is howling."

"Nature anywhere oppresses me, and human kindnesses make me gloomy, rather I prefer walking in a bustling city park until I get tired, and find a bench under some lonely tree, I prefer to be looking at the sky absentmindedly, ah, I prefer to be looking at the smoke and soot flowing away far and sad over the city sky, or at a swallow flying away over the roofs of buildings, into the distance, small."

"Father is eternally tragic."