TAEKO TOMIOKA
1974
GIRL FRIEND
A concubine next door
chants a sutra.
In early afternoon
I saw an animal like an ass
passing under the window.
I saw it through the interstice of the curtain.
There is a woman who comes to see me
always through the interstice of the curtain,
but she's not yet come today.
She promised to come
in a sort of Annamese kimono
made of crepe georgette
with a gait that brings men running.
As she hasn't come yet today
she may have died.
Previously
when I travelled with her
she yearned for an old woodcut
of Germany or somewhere
at an antique shop in the country.
At a country inn
I had a chance for the first time
to tear her hair
as thick as Brigitte Bardot's.
We two danced
the Viennese waltz
with crimson cheeks drawing near
as long as we wished.
Her transparent
optimistic poesy
some time dropped.
I wish to take that for tears.
She doesn't come today.
I pray
loudly though it's still mid-day
like the mistress next door.
She
hasn't promised not to come.
The one who goes,
O the one who has gone!
date unspecified
Translated by
? TAEKO TOMIOKA
Poet, novelist, dramatist and screenwriter Taeko Tomioka (I place her given name before her surname in the English style) was born in the southern Japanese city of Osaka on 28 July 1935. Although her family had been relatively prosperous prior to her birth, this changed after her father, the owner of a foundry, abandoned herself and her mother to run off with another woman.
Tomioka attended the Women's College in Osaka, where she majored in English literature and translated some of the work of Gertrude Stein into Japanese, after which she worked for a time as a high school teacher before leaving that profession in 1960 to move to Tokyo. She had, by this time, already published her first prize-winning poetry collection, titled Henrei [Reward, 1958], following it one year later with a dramatic work titled Matsuri [Festival]. Monogatari no akuru hi [The Story of the Story], a second poetry collection, appeared in 1961.
Tomioka left Tokyo for New York in 1964, returning to Japan in 1966 after her lover left her for a younger woman just as her own mother had previously been abandoned by her father. The following year saw the publication of a complete collection of her poetry, after which she authored the screenplay Shinju ten no Amijima [Double Suicide] for the director Shinoda Masahiro. For the same director she wrote the screenplay Gonza The Spearman, another story based on a traditional Japanese puppet play which was released to great acclaim in 1985.
In 1969 Tomioka married, going on to publish her debut work of fiction Oka ni mukatte hito wa narabu [Facing The Hills They Stand] in 1971. This was followed in 1974 by two more works of fiction Shokubutsu sai [Plants] and Meido no kazoku [Family in Hell], both of which won important literary prizes and consolidated her reputation as a feminist writer critical of traditional Japanese culture and the subservient role women are expected to play within it. Hiberunia kiko [Journey to Ireland], appeared in 1997, with the book going on to win her the prestigious Noma Literary Prize.
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