Kaoru Maruyama
Encyclopedia
Kaoru Maruyama was a Japanese
poet
. His collected works were translated by Robert Epp
.
MARUYAMA KAORU 丸山薫
June 8, 1899 – October 21, 1974
Poet and editor
Why is he an important poet?
Maruyama’s concern with the psyche or the inner self, definitely a primary characteristic of his poetic, became fixed rather early. In sixth grade he was on a class outing to the port of Yokohama when he first saw the sky-blue eyes of some Scandinavian sailors. The brilliance of the blue astonished him. By the time he learned that the eyes are windows to the soul, nothing could have dampened Maruyama’s fascinated concern with the sea or the sky and the psyche they personify.
Various images express this interest. He hints at relationships between a deep pond and stars, which symbolize ideals or objectives. In one work, for example, he peers into a mountain pool and describes the “glimmers of countless stars / coming from deep in the pond / where sun had silently set.” Isolated settings facilitate analyzing his self, for when he’s alone the poet can freely take out his pocket mirror and “gaze / hard enough to plunge through it…into my Self / ——into that far-off Self deep within those eyes gazing at my Self.” In one work Maruyama projects onto inanimate objects his interest in self-watching. Identical sister ships running parallel at sea make him “aware how impossible it would be for the silhouette of my ship to watch itself.” Curiously, he labels this self-observation a “passion for romantic thoughts.” Much rather does such a focus on the psyche suggest modernity.
We get a strong impression of the modern when the poet writes of his identification with a gigantic sea beast that once made eye contact with him. One night, he writes, that fish “unexpectedly came by to greet me” in a dream and then “promptly plunged into that endlessly expanding sea, / ——deep into the underside of my senses.” As he watches fish in a pond, an intriguing perception occurs to him. Maruyama notices how transparent whitebait swimming under the bridge “leave no shadow on the sandy bed / ——quite like the trivial, rambling thoughts / incessantly coming and going through my mind.” The essence of his creativity differs arguably from traditional concerns which no doubt explains his sparse popularity in Japan.
Many successful Maruyama poems impress Western readers because their psychic insights lie just beyond the reach of everyday awareness. Spatial or temporal mix-ups—sometimes intertwined, sometimes distinct—are often particularly memorable. Temporal allusions predominate. One especially admired image describes the mature poet as he watches his younger self gazing out a college classroom window during a lecture. He wonders if the boy he observes could see him—as the successful poet.
Another image describes his discovery in a second-hand bookshop of a lost poetry collection. When he opens the book, time collapses, his past comes alive, and he finds himself transported into another time and place. On a train, Maruyama sometimes sits in the last car where he could observe how “moment by moment the present squeezes into the past.” At other times he chooses the front car, where he could see “vague, far-off forms take shape” as the “future moves incessantly into the present.” Almost always, however, something in the present moment transports his awareness into the past. Or he finds that an X-ray brings to mind distant memories and lost dreams. It “traced in my chest cavity / the very old and darkly-sedimented sea of my youth. / The remains of that longed-for barque, already scuttled, / have turned by now into rusted keel and ribs.” Poetry enlivens the memory or preserves the past.
Poems that deal either with confusions of identity and perceptions or with the uncertainty of the senses also reflect a concern with the psyche. An early example of such mix-ups appears in a 1932 work treating confusion. “Neither the albatross nor the lamp knows / whether the albatross is a lamp or the lamp an albatross.” The nautical mythology, functions, and symbolic significance of the bird and the mast lamp aside, this confusion governs the poem. Another mix-up that similarly results in transformation occurs in a work set in a wintry wilderness. Wolves besiege travelers who through the day had been “dash[ing] over the snowy tundra.” Although the riders managed to hold the wolves at bay through the night, the next morning they begin to wonder if their dogs haven’t perhaps been transformed into wolves. A mutation also occurs in a coral reef where the poet notices something he first imagines to be a shark. Then he realizes it’s “an airman’s boot / ——beginning by now to dissolve.” The boot recalls the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea. In another case Maruyama imagines he’s been metamorphosed into a tree. He thinks, “I’m turning into the tree in me,” then instantly realizes, “No, no——I already am that tree.” As he states in another work, the xylem of a dead-looking winter tree enviably throbs “like fire.” Later he writes, “Trees that spring adorns with blossoms of life, / trees that autumn blazes with scarlet flame, / have now become … my Self.”
Scenery that changes into a totally fresh ambiance absolutely enthralls. Our senses may confuse us and reality may resist or transmute our comprehension. Maruyama reacts by identifying with what he observes, the better to fashion his insights into often stunningly memorable imagery that in many instances begs a psychic interpretation.
CHRONOLOGY
DATE EVENT
1899 June 8: Born in Ôita, Kyûshû, second son of Shigetoshi (1855–1911), an official in the Home Ministry, and his second wife Takeko (1869–1946).
1906 April: Kaoru enters primary school in Seoul, where father Shigetoshi works as an official in the peace-keeping (i.e., policing) agency.
1908 February: Shigetoshi’s kidney problems cause reassignment to the city of Matsué; Tokyo officials appoint him the governor of Shimané Prefecture.
1911 March: Father’s kidney problems worsen, forcing his return to Tokyo for medical care. April: Kaoru enters grade six in Tokyo. On a class field trip to Yokohama he sees the extraordinarily blue eyes of some Scandinavian sailors. This stimulates his fascination with the sea and, indirectly, the psyche. May 22: Father Shigetoshi dies at age 56. September: The family moves to mother Takeko’s home in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture.
1912 April: Enters the Aichi Prefectural High School.
1916 November: The high school literary magazine publishes six of his traditional tanka (31-syllable poems) about the sea.
1917 March: Graduates from high school. Dreams of being captain of his own ship. Takes but fails the exams to the Merchant Marine Academy.
1918 Enters the academy after retaking and passing the examination. Fear of heights prevents work on the rigging, so Kaoru can’t qualify as a line officer or ever be a ship’s captain. He suffers also from swellings in his legs. September: He receives a physical disability discharge.
1919 Decides to be a lighthouse keeper. Relatives urge him to attend college.
1921 April: After extensive academic preparation, Kaoru enters the Third College in Kyoto. Determined not to become a bureaucrat like his father, he majors in French. Cuts so many classes he must repeat the first year.
1925 Misses too many classes again, so he must repeat another year.
1926 March: Graduates. Enters Tokyo Imperial University as a Japanese literature major, which he thinks the “easiest” field. Begins to write free verse.
1928 February: Marries Takai Miyoko (1907–1995), whom he met in 1925 while visiting a friend in Toyohashi. Shortly afterward, Kaoru decides to drop out of the university. A lavish lifestyle, renting a luxurious mansion, sponging friends, and the like, succeed in rapidly dissipating Kaoru’s inheritance. September: Begins to write more imagistic, internal poetry.
1929 Poverty forces the couple to live alternately with relatives. Kaoru aches to return to Tokyo where he hopes to make his mark as a poet.
1931 Fall: Through a friend, Maruyama locates a job for Miyoko at the Mannequin Club in Tokyo. This company places attractive women as models and product demonstrators in metropolitan department stores.
1932 December: Issues his first collection, Sail–Lamp–Gull.
1935 May: Issues his second collection, Funeral of the Crane. June: Publishes Infancy, his third collection. This book of his earliest experiments with free verse wins the first Bungei Hanron Poetry Prize.
1936 September: Issues his fourth collection, Day by Day.
1941 February: Collection number five, Images, which experiments with poems featuring attachment to concrete, impersonal objects. May–July: As a special correspondent for the Central Review, Kaoru sails with midshipmen on the naval training barque Neptune to ports in China.
1942 February: Poetry collection #6, The God Who Wept.
1943 September: Collection #7 of sea poems, Hear the Ship’s Bell.
1944 October: Publishes Strong Japan, children’s poems he later repudiates, presumably because of the pro-war nature of some of the verse.
1945 April: To escape American air raids on Tokyo, Kaoru takes a teaching post in Iwanezawa, Yamagata Prefecture. He starts out teaching grade five. May: Firebombs destroy his Tokyo residence. Miyoko is safe, but not their possessions. July: Kaoru leaves Iwanezawa to locate Miyoko. October: Returns to Iwanezawa with wife and mother; takes over grade three.
1946 September: Collection #8, North Country. October: Mother Takeko dies.
1947 April: Resigns his teaching post to write. Cannot return to devastated Tokyo without established residence and employment. Kaoru therefore remains in Iwanezawa where food is readily available.
1948 Verse collections: March: #9 Magical Country. May: #10 Blue Chalkboard (for kids). June: #11 Flowerheart. July: Leaves Iwanezawa for Toyohashi.
1949 April: Lecturer in modern Japanese poetry at Aichi University, a private college in Toyohashi.
1952 August: Verse collection #12 Lost Youth.
1954 November: Receives the Fifth Toyohashi Culture Prize.
1955 July: Listed as the purser, he leaves Yokohama on the freighter Yamashita Maru for a two-month voyage to the South Seas and Australia.
1956 January 3: Doctors remove two-thirds of his severely ulcerated stomach.
1957 May: Receives the Tenth Central Japan Cultural Prize.
1959 April: Aichi University promotes Maruyama to visiting professor.
1962 November: Verse collection #13 Hostage Sea.
1972 September: Verse collection #14 Moon Passage. October: Dedicates his poetry stele on the grounds of the primary school in Iwanezawa.
1973 May: Last poetry collection, #15 Face with Ants.
1974 October 21: Dies of a cerebral thrombosis from hardening of the arteries.
1990 April: Maruyama Commemorative Museum and Archive opens in Iwanezawa.
1995 December 25: Widow Miyoko dies of pneumonia at age 88.
SOURCES
Robert Epp, translator and compiler, “Chapbook: The Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru.” The Beloit Poetry Journal (Summer 1972), 48 pages.
______, “Futatsu no kagi” [Two Keys (to the poetry of Maruyama Kaoru)]. Kigi no Sugata, 1985.02, pages 69–71, issue commemorating Maruyama’s poetry stele in Iwanezawa.
______, translator and compiler, Self-Righting Lamp—Selected Poems: Maruyama Kaoru, Preface by Donald Keene, Asian Poetry in Translation : Japan #12. (Oakland, Michigan: Katydid Books, 1990), 123 pages.
______, translator, compiler, annotator, That Far-Off Self—The Collected Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (Stanwood, WA: Yakusha, 1994), 367 pages.
______, “Ship of Reason: The Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru,” Shôwa shijinron [On Shôwa Poets]. Tokyo: Yûseidô, 1994, pages 189–204; Japanese translation, “Risei no fune” by Aizawa Shirô, pages 205–224.
______, translator and annotator, Threading the Maze—Selections from the Verse of Seven Modern Japanese Poets (Stanwood, WA: Yakusha, 1997), pages 215–258.
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. His collected works were translated by Robert Epp
Robert Epp
Robert Charles Epp is a translator of Japanese literature into English. Among others, he has translated the poetry of Hagiwara Sakutarō, Maruyama Kaoru, and Tachihara Michizō.A.M., Ph.D...
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MARUYAMA KAORU 丸山薫
June 8, 1899 – October 21, 1974
Poet and editor
Why is he an important poet?
Maruyama’s concern with the psyche or the inner self, definitely a primary characteristic of his poetic, became fixed rather early. In sixth grade he was on a class outing to the port of Yokohama when he first saw the sky-blue eyes of some Scandinavian sailors. The brilliance of the blue astonished him. By the time he learned that the eyes are windows to the soul, nothing could have dampened Maruyama’s fascinated concern with the sea or the sky and the psyche they personify.
Various images express this interest. He hints at relationships between a deep pond and stars, which symbolize ideals or objectives. In one work, for example, he peers into a mountain pool and describes the “glimmers of countless stars / coming from deep in the pond / where sun had silently set.” Isolated settings facilitate analyzing his self, for when he’s alone the poet can freely take out his pocket mirror and “gaze / hard enough to plunge through it…into my Self / ——into that far-off Self deep within those eyes gazing at my Self.” In one work Maruyama projects onto inanimate objects his interest in self-watching. Identical sister ships running parallel at sea make him “aware how impossible it would be for the silhouette of my ship to watch itself.” Curiously, he labels this self-observation a “passion for romantic thoughts.” Much rather does such a focus on the psyche suggest modernity.
We get a strong impression of the modern when the poet writes of his identification with a gigantic sea beast that once made eye contact with him. One night, he writes, that fish “unexpectedly came by to greet me” in a dream and then “promptly plunged into that endlessly expanding sea, / ——deep into the underside of my senses.” As he watches fish in a pond, an intriguing perception occurs to him. Maruyama notices how transparent whitebait swimming under the bridge “leave no shadow on the sandy bed / ——quite like the trivial, rambling thoughts / incessantly coming and going through my mind.” The essence of his creativity differs arguably from traditional concerns which no doubt explains his sparse popularity in Japan.
Many successful Maruyama poems impress Western readers because their psychic insights lie just beyond the reach of everyday awareness. Spatial or temporal mix-ups—sometimes intertwined, sometimes distinct—are often particularly memorable. Temporal allusions predominate. One especially admired image describes the mature poet as he watches his younger self gazing out a college classroom window during a lecture. He wonders if the boy he observes could see him—as the successful poet.
Another image describes his discovery in a second-hand bookshop of a lost poetry collection. When he opens the book, time collapses, his past comes alive, and he finds himself transported into another time and place. On a train, Maruyama sometimes sits in the last car where he could observe how “moment by moment the present squeezes into the past.” At other times he chooses the front car, where he could see “vague, far-off forms take shape” as the “future moves incessantly into the present.” Almost always, however, something in the present moment transports his awareness into the past. Or he finds that an X-ray brings to mind distant memories and lost dreams. It “traced in my chest cavity / the very old and darkly-sedimented sea of my youth. / The remains of that longed-for barque, already scuttled, / have turned by now into rusted keel and ribs.” Poetry enlivens the memory or preserves the past.
Poems that deal either with confusions of identity and perceptions or with the uncertainty of the senses also reflect a concern with the psyche. An early example of such mix-ups appears in a 1932 work treating confusion. “Neither the albatross nor the lamp knows / whether the albatross is a lamp or the lamp an albatross.” The nautical mythology, functions, and symbolic significance of the bird and the mast lamp aside, this confusion governs the poem. Another mix-up that similarly results in transformation occurs in a work set in a wintry wilderness. Wolves besiege travelers who through the day had been “dash[ing] over the snowy tundra.” Although the riders managed to hold the wolves at bay through the night, the next morning they begin to wonder if their dogs haven’t perhaps been transformed into wolves. A mutation also occurs in a coral reef where the poet notices something he first imagines to be a shark. Then he realizes it’s “an airman’s boot / ——beginning by now to dissolve.” The boot recalls the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea. In another case Maruyama imagines he’s been metamorphosed into a tree. He thinks, “I’m turning into the tree in me,” then instantly realizes, “No, no——I already am that tree.” As he states in another work, the xylem of a dead-looking winter tree enviably throbs “like fire.” Later he writes, “Trees that spring adorns with blossoms of life, / trees that autumn blazes with scarlet flame, / have now become … my Self.”
Scenery that changes into a totally fresh ambiance absolutely enthralls. Our senses may confuse us and reality may resist or transmute our comprehension. Maruyama reacts by identifying with what he observes, the better to fashion his insights into often stunningly memorable imagery that in many instances begs a psychic interpretation.
CHRONOLOGY
DATE EVENT
1899 June 8: Born in Ôita, Kyûshû, second son of Shigetoshi (1855–1911), an official in the Home Ministry, and his second wife Takeko (1869–1946).
1906 April: Kaoru enters primary school in Seoul, where father Shigetoshi works as an official in the peace-keeping (i.e., policing) agency.
1908 February: Shigetoshi’s kidney problems cause reassignment to the city of Matsué; Tokyo officials appoint him the governor of Shimané Prefecture.
1911 March: Father’s kidney problems worsen, forcing his return to Tokyo for medical care. April: Kaoru enters grade six in Tokyo. On a class field trip to Yokohama he sees the extraordinarily blue eyes of some Scandinavian sailors. This stimulates his fascination with the sea and, indirectly, the psyche. May 22: Father Shigetoshi dies at age 56. September: The family moves to mother Takeko’s home in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture.
1912 April: Enters the Aichi Prefectural High School.
1916 November: The high school literary magazine publishes six of his traditional tanka (31-syllable poems) about the sea.
1917 March: Graduates from high school. Dreams of being captain of his own ship. Takes but fails the exams to the Merchant Marine Academy.
1918 Enters the academy after retaking and passing the examination. Fear of heights prevents work on the rigging, so Kaoru can’t qualify as a line officer or ever be a ship’s captain. He suffers also from swellings in his legs. September: He receives a physical disability discharge.
1919 Decides to be a lighthouse keeper. Relatives urge him to attend college.
1921 April: After extensive academic preparation, Kaoru enters the Third College in Kyoto. Determined not to become a bureaucrat like his father, he majors in French. Cuts so many classes he must repeat the first year.
1925 Misses too many classes again, so he must repeat another year.
1926 March: Graduates. Enters Tokyo Imperial University as a Japanese literature major, which he thinks the “easiest” field. Begins to write free verse.
1928 February: Marries Takai Miyoko (1907–1995), whom he met in 1925 while visiting a friend in Toyohashi. Shortly afterward, Kaoru decides to drop out of the university. A lavish lifestyle, renting a luxurious mansion, sponging friends, and the like, succeed in rapidly dissipating Kaoru’s inheritance. September: Begins to write more imagistic, internal poetry.
1929 Poverty forces the couple to live alternately with relatives. Kaoru aches to return to Tokyo where he hopes to make his mark as a poet.
1931 Fall: Through a friend, Maruyama locates a job for Miyoko at the Mannequin Club in Tokyo. This company places attractive women as models and product demonstrators in metropolitan department stores.
1932 December: Issues his first collection, Sail–Lamp–Gull.
1935 May: Issues his second collection, Funeral of the Crane. June: Publishes Infancy, his third collection. This book of his earliest experiments with free verse wins the first Bungei Hanron Poetry Prize.
1936 September: Issues his fourth collection, Day by Day.
1941 February: Collection number five, Images, which experiments with poems featuring attachment to concrete, impersonal objects. May–July: As a special correspondent for the Central Review, Kaoru sails with midshipmen on the naval training barque Neptune to ports in China.
1942 February: Poetry collection #6, The God Who Wept.
1943 September: Collection #7 of sea poems, Hear the Ship’s Bell.
1944 October: Publishes Strong Japan, children’s poems he later repudiates, presumably because of the pro-war nature of some of the verse.
1945 April: To escape American air raids on Tokyo, Kaoru takes a teaching post in Iwanezawa, Yamagata Prefecture. He starts out teaching grade five. May: Firebombs destroy his Tokyo residence. Miyoko is safe, but not their possessions. July: Kaoru leaves Iwanezawa to locate Miyoko. October: Returns to Iwanezawa with wife and mother; takes over grade three.
1946 September: Collection #8, North Country. October: Mother Takeko dies.
1947 April: Resigns his teaching post to write. Cannot return to devastated Tokyo without established residence and employment. Kaoru therefore remains in Iwanezawa where food is readily available.
1948 Verse collections: March: #9 Magical Country. May: #10 Blue Chalkboard (for kids). June: #11 Flowerheart. July: Leaves Iwanezawa for Toyohashi.
1949 April: Lecturer in modern Japanese poetry at Aichi University, a private college in Toyohashi.
1952 August: Verse collection #12 Lost Youth.
1954 November: Receives the Fifth Toyohashi Culture Prize.
1955 July: Listed as the purser, he leaves Yokohama on the freighter Yamashita Maru for a two-month voyage to the South Seas and Australia.
1956 January 3: Doctors remove two-thirds of his severely ulcerated stomach.
1957 May: Receives the Tenth Central Japan Cultural Prize.
1959 April: Aichi University promotes Maruyama to visiting professor.
1962 November: Verse collection #13 Hostage Sea.
1972 September: Verse collection #14 Moon Passage. October: Dedicates his poetry stele on the grounds of the primary school in Iwanezawa.
1973 May: Last poetry collection, #15 Face with Ants.
1974 October 21: Dies of a cerebral thrombosis from hardening of the arteries.
1990 April: Maruyama Commemorative Museum and Archive opens in Iwanezawa.
1995 December 25: Widow Miyoko dies of pneumonia at age 88.
SOURCES
Robert Epp, translator and compiler, “Chapbook: The Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru.” The Beloit Poetry Journal (Summer 1972), 48 pages.
______, “Futatsu no kagi” [Two Keys (to the poetry of Maruyama Kaoru)]. Kigi no Sugata, 1985.02, pages 69–71, issue commemorating Maruyama’s poetry stele in Iwanezawa.
______, translator and compiler, Self-Righting Lamp—Selected Poems: Maruyama Kaoru, Preface by Donald Keene, Asian Poetry in Translation : Japan #12. (Oakland, Michigan: Katydid Books, 1990), 123 pages.
______, translator, compiler, annotator, That Far-Off Self—The Collected Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (Stanwood, WA: Yakusha, 1994), 367 pages.
______, “Ship of Reason: The Poetry of Maruyama Kaoru,” Shôwa shijinron [On Shôwa Poets]. Tokyo: Yûseidô, 1994, pages 189–204; Japanese translation, “Risei no fune” by Aizawa Shirô, pages 205–224.
______, translator and annotator, Threading the Maze—Selections from the Verse of Seven Modern Japanese Poets (Stanwood, WA: Yakusha, 1997), pages 215–258.