April 17, 2013 Joongang Daily
Joongang Daily SUNDAY FOCUS
A Truthful Mind Transmitted over the Border
Poet Lee Sunshine released ‘a poetry book of comfort’ in Japan
I can’t see it but I feel it in my heart Your aching heart
You will have the bigger and warmer heart as much as the depth of your sorrow
In life, in a country How could there be only blooming spring But there is no winter not followed by spring
It is a new beginning again We as survivors create greatness
This is a part of a poem from Lee Sunshine’s new book of poetry Where There is Your Heart, a Flower Blooms published in Japan.
This book of poetry includes 192 pieces of poetry, comforting the victims who are suffered from horrors of the big earthquake that swept the Tohoku region of Japan on March 11, 2011 and singing the message of hope to proceed forward to the future by overcoming their pain. The book was published by Asukashinsha. It is a well-known publishing house for creating a sensation in Japanese society by discovering a hundred-year-old poet, Toyo Shibata.
The horrors of the East Japan Earthquake are still going on. The official number of the death toll has reached currently about 20,000 and the that of the missing people has reached about 3,200. The Japanese government estimates the amount of damage to reach 24 trillion yen, approximately 345 trillion won at maximum. Due to the nuclear crisis involving the Fukushima no. 1 plant, hundreds of thousands people had to leave their home town.
“Anybody who observed the calamity must have felt shocked and compassion from the bottom of his or her heart,” said Lee, “I was so worried and fidgety while watching the news and at some point such a mind poured out the poems.” In such a way, she has written over 250 pieces of poems. Her ardent poems were known to the press in both Korea and Japan at the same time. In March 27 last year, Joongang Sunday, Asahi and Sankei Newspaper delivered her poems.
Japanese reaction was enthusiastic. “From celebrities like the president of Tokyo University, scholars, writers and so on, also from ordinary people, I have received so many letters of gratitude from those who were deeply touched,” relates Lee, “I could feel that since affection and compassionate mind towards human beings has been transmitted over the border.”
In September last year, her book was published in Korea with a title How Could Anything But Blooming Spring Exists in Life?, which met a greater sensation. The book also contains Japanese translations of the poems in tanka style.
Former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro 森喜郞 once recited these poems, flipping through the pages of the book while sitting down with Lee for over an hour at the National Assembly. “It is just so impressive that a foreigner composed poems as such. These should be on textbooks and read my many Japanese,” said Mori and ordered a hundred copies on the spot.
In October, at the event of Korea-Japan Festival held in Tokyo, Minister of the Ministry of Culture, Kwangsik Choi, quoting Lee’s poem in his congratulatory address, emphasized, “Such a spirit is what two countries should share in common,” and gained great empathy. After his speech, leaders of Japanese government and the opponent party, such as Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio 鳩山由紀夫, Komeito Party’s leader Yamaguchi Natsuo 山口那津男 responded with a storm of applause.
The Japanese Embassador Muto Masatoshi 武藤正敏 at an event on March 11th of this year, where Korean donators were invited, also expressed his gratitude by quoting Lee’s poem. Lee Sunshine’s poetry, that is to say, fairly well contributes to the diplomatic relations between the two countries.
One of the reasons for the great sensation is the fact that the poems were translated in Japanese traditional poetry, tanka style. As a counterpart to Korean traditional poetry, the Japanese traditional poetry is collectively called waka 和歌 and tanka takes a representative place for waka. Consisting of 31 syllables in total, in meter of 5-7-5-7-7, tanka is one of the most favorite literary genre in Japan along with haiku 俳句 consisting of 17 syllables. Japanese learn tanka by heart, take it as an anchor of their spirit, and call it a “hometown in heart.” Their feeling of love, longing, and sorrow is solely embodied in a single line of poem.
It is of course included in the Japanese common mendatory curriculum and Japanese learn famous tanka by heart since they were little. Tanka poets are called kajin 歌人 and highly respected in the society.
There is another reason why Lee chose to translate her poems in tanka style. She is the daughter of Poet Son Hoyun, the only tanka artist in Korea. During Japanese colonial period, Son went to Tokyo and studied under Sasaki Nobutsuna 佐々木信綱, one of the greatest tanka poet of the time. After she came back to Korea, she composed more than 2,000 pieces of tanka for over sixty years of her entire life.
Her works were published into six volumes by Kodansha, titled Mugungwha (the national flower of Korea). In 1997, her poetic tablet was established in Aomori, Japan.
However, Poet Son Hoyun’s poem came into the spotlight in Korea only in June, 2005 when Korea-Japan Summit Talk took place. The then prime minister Koizumi Junichiro recited Son’s tanka at the Summit Talk and mentioned her spirit of peace during the foreign press conference.
I have a desperate hope, may these countries be without strife
This is a single line of poem heavily projecting the hope for the amicable relations between the two country.
“Mother considered the root of Tanka as Hyangga, a style of poem written in Baekje and Shilla which were transferred from our ancestors to the ancient Japan. She spent her entire her life at her three-hundred-year-old traditional house reifying the sentiment of Korea into the form of poetry,” said Lee.
For the first time as a foreigner, Son was invited as a great master of tanka and attended in Korean traditional clothes, hanbok, to the New Year’s Utakai 新年御前歌會, convened by the Emperor of Japan and broadcast life on the nation television network, NHK.
Lee emphasizes, however, that what is more important than talking about the root of tanka is to have such poetry manifest one’s universal love for the mankind.
Lee said, “Considering the size, economic and military power of our country, it is not easy for us to become a strong and influential country. But we could expand our minds and thoughts, which will eventually contribute to the leadership and the size of our country.” Lee thinks literature plays a key role as the means of expressing such minds.
Lee did not intend to compose poems for the sake of the diplomatic relations with Japan from the beginning. “I thought, ‘if it were my mother, she would have felt deeply sorry for the calamity in the neighboring country and would have comforted them with a single line of poem from the bottom of her heart.’ and I tried to express her mind into the poems,” remarked Lee, “Receiving the enthusiastic responses from Japan, I once again realized that a truthful mind, after all, gets transmitted over the border.”
The Japanese version of her book employed a unique way of translation this time. When a poem is translated into a tanka, it has be altered so that it fits into a certain number of syllables and meter. The one often has to utilize old-fashioned expressions that are not commonly used in modern Japanese. Therefore, she translated in modern Japanese so that it could be read among younger readers. Both the volumes were the results of a extremely difficult process of translation.
“Thanks to SNS, the world has become closer and we need to have a self-awareness that all human beings are ‘one family’ wherever we are,” stressed Lee, the daughter of the world’s unique mother-daughter poets, “when we change our truthful mind into another form of words, poetry, it would become a universal language, especially one’s affection and spirit are truthfully reflected.”
April, 8 2013 Lee Sungnyoung
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