Ame ni mo Makezu
Ame ni mo makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain[1]) is a famous poem written by Kenji Miyazawa,[2] a poet from the northern prefecture of Iwate in Japan who lived from 1896 to 1933. The poem was found posthumously in a small black notebook in one of the poet's trunks.
The poem
The text of the poem is given below in Japanese, as a transliteration using romaji, and in translation. While this version includes some kanji, the poem was originally written in Katakana (see style).
Original | Modern orthography | Transliteration | English Translation |
---|---|---|---|
雨ニモマケズ |
雨にもまけず |
ame ni mo makezu |
not losing to the rain |
Style
Miyazawa chose to write the poem using katakana. This could seem to be stylistically odd from a modern perspective, as katakana is nowadays (usually) only used in Japanese writing to denote foreign words. However, at the time, katakana rather than hiragana was the preferred syllabary. The limited use of kanji might be viewed as a move to make his poem more accessible to the rural folk of northern Japan with whom he spent his life,[citation needed] or perhaps as similar to American poet E. E. Cummings's style in using primarily lower case.[citation needed]
Notes
- It is important to note that cold summers in Japan mean a poorer harvest, hence the line "when the summer is cold, wandering upset."
- The transliteration above is not direct, and uses a modern romaji rendering. Miyazawa wrote in the orthography common to his time, where コハガラナクテ (kohagaranakute) would today be rendered as コワガラナクテ (kowagaranakute), イヒ (ihi) as イイ (ii), and サウ (sau) as ソウ (sou).
- "hidori" in "hidori no toki ha namida wo nagashi" is generally taken as a simple typo,[citation needed] as Miyazawa made similar typos in his other works. But since hidori means the daily wages of day laborers in the dialect of Hanamaki, some people believe the true meaning of this verse is that Miyazawa cries out of sympathy with the poor farmers who have to work as day laborers.[3]
See also
References
External links
- Be not Defeated by the Rain, a translation by David Sulz
- Unperturbed by the Rain, a translation by Steven P. Venti
- Standing Up to the Rain, a translation from Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Someone who is unfazed by the rain, a translation by Michael Brase