6 books you want to read during Golden Week, correspondence between Shuntaro Tanikawa and Mika Brady, Asian author anthology, popular non-fiction, etc. Books you want to read this month (No. 11) | JBpress autograph

Take a bird’s-eye view of your daily life and reconsider it. Under the sky of travel, play in an extraordinary world. While it’s fun to spend lively moments with family and friends, the real thrill of a long vacation is the luxury of immersing yourself in the world of books. We have carefully selected 6 books recommended for this year’s Golden Week.

Selection/text: Yukari Onsui

Synchronicity between “national poet” and “local writer”

【overview】

A poet who focuses on the world beyond the here and now and a writer who looks at the world from the ground of this world exchanged poems and letters over the course of a year and a half. In Tokyo and Brighton, against the backdrop of their respective lives, such as aging and nursing care, we explore letters on the edge of words. A collaboration of three generations of different expressions, with new illustrations drawn by Mondo Okumura.

Mikako Brady is a nursery teacher and author based in Brighton, UK. Even after the death of his father Tetsuzo Tanikawa (philosopher) and his wife Takiko Takiko, the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa continues to live in the house (mansion) in Minami Asagaya, Suginami Ward, where he was born and raised. This book is a collection of back-and-forth e-mail correspondence between Brighton and Asagaya.

A wealthy monk who grew up in an intellectual family and has always been at the forefront of poetry. Born into a blue-collar family, he went on to attend one of the most prestigious high schools in Fukuoka, but fell in love with punk music, worked part-time to pay for travel expenses, and moved to Europe.He has been living in the UK for a quarter of a century now. It’s a strange combination, but it seems that the idea came from Iwanami’s Tosho editorial department.

The first message is from Brighton. In 2022, “Drinking Kikumasamune while eating a turkey sandwich” begins on New Year’s Day with the words, “Nice to meet you. My name is Mika Brady.”

Brady mentioned that the poet had muttered on a radio program, “I don’t want to write long sentences, I don’t want to read them,” and that the letter itself was a long sentence, “How could I even start communicating with Mr. Tanigawa? “It just seems impossible,” he says, openly exposing his fearful self.

It would be nice if we could exchange poems, but writing poetry is just not possible for me. So how do we bridge the gap between “impossible” and “impossible”? Whether it’s in a business setting or in ordinary conversation, everyone desperately searches for common denominators when trying to communicate successfully. So did Mr. Brady.

The sign she caught was a poem by a poet called “There is and there is not.” “People at the Bottom” was written by American writer Jack London (1876-1916) while infiltrating the poor East End of London. The poet read it and realized that he had never written about poverty, so he wrote it down.

Strangely enough, “People at the Bottom” was also Mr. Brady’s “common book.” “I feel like my life is being controlled remotely by this book.” Her marriage to a man from the East End may have been achieved by remote control, and “Children’s Class Struggle,” which depicts her days working in a daycare center in a deprived area, is directly inspired by “People at the Bottom.” He said he was influenced by

By the way, I started following Mikako Brady’s book because of “Children’s Class Struggles From Free Nurseries in Broken Britain” (published by Misuzu Shobo in 2017 and won the Shincho Documentation Award in the same year). For the first time, I realized, in a tangential way, that the records of my study abroad and stay there belonged to the elite class.

According to Brady’s summary, “Aru To Nai”, which begins with the sentence “I have never experienced poverty,” is a rap song about topics such as incurable diseases, tanks, international affairs, coffins, rice planting, and lending and borrowing money. The story progresses smoothly with “yes” and “no”, and at the end, it starts to get heavy for a moment when he mentions freedom and loneliness, but it ends with the humorous line, “I have been questioned by a police officer before.”

Humor in this case is a grin or an “innocent” laugh. Brady also touches on the uniqueness of British humor, which is made up of irony and satire, and writes:

“Innocence tends to be associated with purity and seen as the best thing.However, in a world where we have to take everything at face value and react straight,” “Innocence is often associated with purity, and it is thought that it is the best thing.” It’s like stuffing something up your nose and suffocating.”

He is intimidated by correspondence with national poets, his connection with Jack London, his respect for Tanigawa’s poetry, and his own territory of British humor. This first letter, created with a number of hooks, runs the risk of being too long and not being read, but it seems like a model letter to send to an elder you love and have never met. .

Tanigawa-san’s reply to this letter is also great. “I have been in the language business in the form of poetry for over 70 years, so my head has become a poet’s head, and I can’t get used to prose,” he wrote in a poem called “Withered Bouquet.” as a reply. This is a poem.

“A few wilted wildflowers are discarded on the side of the road/(omitted)/From a casual video saved on a smartphone/The writer imagines the first line of the story/The poem is already complete there/ he thinks.”

“I want to put my roots down in the soil of real life/Poetry floats in weightless space/I catch my eye on a withered bouquet of flowers on the roadside/I try to turn it into words” “Those microscopic things that are of no use to people… He believes that his actions have nothing to do with the difficulties facing humanity on Earth.

The poem concludes by saying, “I can’t deny that I feel a small joy” in being in the same time and space as a small decaying bouquet of flowers. drink He writes about it in his second letter.

There was synchronicity in Tanigawa’s “withered bouquet.” This is because when Mr. Brady was a teenager in Fukuoka, far from love and romance, the Sex Pistols struck him as street rock that reflected the devastation of Britain. I had seen a print online of Johnny Rotten’s song “We Are Flowers in the Trash” and was debating whether or not to buy it.

Encouraged by this poem, Brady decided to purchase it. The intense colors of the yellow background with a bouquet of poisonous pink flowers don’t suit my current work room, but I think I should change the curtains. Based on this flow, the hook for the third letter was the question, “Are there any paintings or photographs displayed in the room where Mr. Tanigawa writes?”

The poet responded that his necessities are an amplifier, speakers, and a PC to listen to music streamed to a CD deck. “A few bars of my favorite music is like a favorite woman,” “I can directly touch the cosmos,” “It’s the only medium,” and “Poetry makes me fall in love with music.” “It’s one of those clichés that people say.”