“Ame ni
mo makezu” (Be not Defeated by the Rain) is one of the most famous poems in
the Japanese language. Written by
beloved author Kenji Miyazawa, the
poem was discovered among his possessions after his passing in 1933. Like Max
Ehrmann’s “Deriderata” (1927), “Ame
ni mo makezu” is a kind of a mantra or a musing on how to live one’s best
life.
This bilingual picture book edition Rain Won’t (雨ニモマケズ/ Ame ni mo makezu, 2013),
has been translated by
American poet and translator, Arthur
Binard and illustrated by renowned animator Kōji Yamamura. In the
afterward, Binard suggests that he wanted to recapture the lost traditional landscapes
of Miyazawa’s Iwate Prefecture. “Kenji lived in a land where people grew,
raised, and caught all their food. Now
more than 60 perfect of what’s eaten in Japan is imported,” Binard writes, and
goes on to lament the loss of arable lands and free-flowing rivers to
commercial urban streetscapes and concrete riverbanks. Binard seems to be using Miyazawa’s words as
a rallying cry against nuclear power and multinational corporations and in
favour of a return to living in harmony with the environment.
our Miyazawa noren
This message resonates very strongly
for my family because this poem has special meaning to us. My husband
specialises in sustainable agriculture and shortly after the disaster of 3/11
we were visited by friends/colleagues from Japan. One of them, brought us a noren from Iwate and told us what a
close call he had the day of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (see intro to: Anime
Adaptations of Kenji Miyazawa’s Stories and Poems to read full story). Iwate is just north of Fukushima and was
badly affected by the 2011 tsunami. As
part of the redevelopment of this area, some researchers are looking at how to restore
Satoyama landscapes.
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| Order from amazon.co.jp. |
With his lovingly drawn
illustrations, Koji Yamamura has managed to capture the beauty and diversity
off the Satoyama landscape of Miyazawa’s time (early Shōwa period). Satoyama (里山) is the name
of the landscape that is cushioned between the mountain foothills and arable
land. It “is characterized by a mosaic
feature of different land uses such as woodland, grassland, paddy field,
farmland, irrigation ponds and canals, and human settlements, which have been
maintained in an integrated manner.” (source: satoyama-initiative.org). Simply put, it is a landscape in which humans
and the natural world are living in harmony with one another. The most famous example in Japanese popular
culture is the rural landscape that the Kusakabe family (Mei, Satsuki and their
Dad) move to in Hayao Miyazaki’s My
Neighbour Totoro (1988).
Using a limited palette (green,
brown, yellow, a little bit of red), Yamamura not only depicts the landscape
suggested by the original poem, but also adds depictions of the creatures that
thrive in a Satoyama landscape. This
includes a variety of insects (dragonflies, grasshoppers, ladybugs, wasps, etc.),
birds (tits, swallows, egrets, owls, etc.), and mammals (tanuki, domestic
animals), and, of course, people.
The result is a beautiful picture
book edition of Rain Won’t (雨ニモマゲズ/ Ame ni mo makezu, 2013) that is fully bilingual and
can be enjoyed by the whole family.
Although it looks like a typical children’s storybook, the language and
philosophy is geared more to an adult reader.
The illustrations are very detailed – the kind of book you can read
again and again and always spot something new.
Order from amazon.co.jp.
Catherine Munroe
Hotes
My thanks to Koji Yamamura for his
generosity.
