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nmcannon's review
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Yes, I picked up Midaregami because of Bungo Stray Dogs. There were some additional reasons. Second, my local library had a copy, so why not. Third, Yosano-san is considered something of a queer icon by the modern sapphic Japanese community, and I’m always down to learn more queer history.
Kobayashi-san, Reichhold-san, and Yuhki-san’s introduction to A Girl with Tangled Hair is solid and accessible to those new to her work and the larger genre, like me. They explain what a tanka is and patiently contextualize Yosano-san’s poems. Her work is seminal for both Japanese tanka and literature as a whole. She was a master of the craft. Her poems are full of female sexuality and carnal yearning, which shocked the public. Previous to her, women in poetry were mostly objects and/or mothers. Nobody, especially not a female poet, had considered breasts as an erogenous zone. Past the boob and into the heart, many of her poems draw from her life, the going’s on of the poetry scene, and how she very much wanted to get railed. Knowing about her life adds extra spice to the poems, and the front matter duly includes a biography, “Cast of Characters,” and timeline of the affair. Midaregami’s 399 tanka specifically chronicle her journey to marrying Yosano Tekkan-san.
Obviously the poems are amazing. I wrote several down in a little notebook and shared them with my friends. The poems are, at times, melodramatic and high-strung; full of yearning, and brimming with melancholia. Yet they’re always evocative and beautiful. I seem to have stumbled upon a controversy re: Yosano-san’s queerness. I’ve linked below two essays on the subject. The short version is that Yosano-san’s poetry lends to a queer reading, and the modern queer community has found themselves in her work. Yosano-san herself never explicitly stated she was queer, and she and her editors may (or may not) have gone to great lengths to obscure any sapphic longing. This edition's editors call Yosano-san and her maybe partner Tomiko-san “great friends.” The poems have been rearranged out of timeline order many times, by both Yosano-san and others. Despite the front matter’s emphasis on how autobiographical the tanka are, I found it distracting and impossible to figure out the chronology of the poems or follow a consistent emotional thread. Playing detective decreased my enjoyment. I recommend just going with the flow.
Taken as they are, the tanka paint a tantalizing picture and set up a mirror to my experience as a bisexual woman. Some of the tanka praise Tomiko-san and Tekkan-san’s beauty, passion, and wit. In one, Yosano-san expresses a cheerful shiver at feeling Tomiko-san’s cold feet in bed (highly relatable!). Others display a fierce protectiveness of both people, especially Tomiko-san, which gains poignancy knowing Tomiko-san died much too soon. My favorite section was Shirayui or “White Lily,” because it focused more on the tentative triad’s relationship. At the time of writing, lilies weren’t associated with sapphic love, but they sure are now. Despite the obfuscations done by the poet herself and others besides, these do feel like queer poems.
Overall, I really enjoyed A Girl with Tangled Hair and want to read more! Yosano-san was a fascinating woman who broke ground on a genre.
Nippon – Your Doorway to Japan’s essay “A Poet For All Seasons: Yosano Akiko and Same-Sex Love” by Janine Beichman: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/b09011/
Making Queer History’s essay “Yosano Akiko”: https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2020/4/15/yosano-akiko
invisibleninjacat's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
I had never read tanka before this, so this was a new experience for me. They certainly lost something in translation - the number of syllables couldn't be kept the same, and as described in the introduction, Japanese allows for more ambiguity than English. The footnotes were not well copyedited. I would have liked more context to some of the poems as well. Overall, an interesting read.
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