michael lambe's scrapbook

Here’s a couple of links before I get started. One to Deep Kyoto and the Cafe/Bar/Knick-Knack shop Smoke Room.

Then up on Pink Tentacle I love these beautiful 19th century Japanese ghost scrolls. Nice and creepy for the Obon season.

Now for today’s message from Hozouji which is a poem by the poet and calligrapher Mitsuo Aida. Mitsuo Aida was (and still is!) a popular poet, who spoke in frank warm terms of our everyday human and emotional quandries. I have a book of his work on my shelf, いまここ：The Here and Now,, that a very kind colleague gave me many birthdays ago. I frequently return to it and flip through it’s pages and find myself thinking: “Yes! Yes! That’s so true!” His work has been extensively translated, so probably this one has been too. That’s not going to stop me having my own little crack at it though. Here’s the poem:

あの苦しみ
悲しみも
自分が
自分になるための
みんな肥料

Ano kurushimi
kanashimi mo
jibun ga
jibun ni naru tame no
minna hiryou

The poet is talking about sadness and suffering and how they help us to grow and to find ourselves. The implication being, without any suffering we wouldn’t be able to prove ourselves or find out what we are really capable of. We would never really grow up into real adult human beings. For that reason, all that pain and suffering and shit, it’s all 肥料 he says. Now the kanji 肥 (hi) means to enrich, fatten, to make fertile and the kanji 料 (ryou) simply means stuff. What they mean together is manure! Here’s my translation:

That suffering
and sadness too
is all rich fertilizer
to help you grow
into you.

Any thoughts, Masaya?