Tangled Hair by Akiko Yosano (1901)

Akiko Yosano (1878-1942) was a celebrated and revolutionary Japanese poet, feminist, and pacifist, who wrote more than 75 books.

Poetry Review:  For those who want something deeper than a rom com, who want to touch some moments from a certain time in your life, this is the book for you. First some background on Tangled Hair, this most excellent and intriguing book: the poems are in a Japanese form called tanka, which consists of five-lines written in a 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic form. The first three lines are essentially a haiku, with two lines added. As with haiku, the Japanese syllabic form is not generally applicable in English, due to differences between the languages. The translators (Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda) claim that tanka is the most popular form of Japanese poetry (I might've thought haiku). The original book (Midaregami in Japanese) published in 1901 had 399 tanka, of which 165 were selected for this edition.

The poems in Tangled Hair address love above all, but love in many guises, including elements of religion, geisha, social class, sensuality, and most importantly, a woman's place in life and society.

   Do you know
   who bit her sleeve
   at the Osaka Inn
   reading your poem
   that cold autumn day?

This is very strongly a woman's view of love and the world, and Yosano's vision in Tangled Hair was revolutionary and incisive.  The bite of her words are sharp and precise, containing a keen awareness of those moments when emotions are too much to bear.

   My wish:
   to smear
   poisoned honey
   on the lips of youth
   seeking love!

At the same time, many of the poems are simply those of a person in love, if that's simple at all. Akiko Yosano's poems try to capture a single moment, but enable the reader to feel the multi-faceted emotions possible in that one moment. There is great depth in these short poems.

   Incense smoke
   curling up round
   the hair of my departed friend
   hair that I envied
   when she was alive.

Anyone interested in love, emotion, feeling, yearning, sensuality, dreaming, all indelibly expressed, with depths within depths, will find a home in Tangled Hair.

This book is scholarly as well, with a lengthy introduction that contains a history of Akiko Yosano, including her husband, also a poet, and their deep relationship with another woman (see third poem above). The poems are also provided in both Japanese characters and romaji, and add an in-depth end note explaining each poem. Two final points: (1) the end notes are useful, especially in providing insight into the symbolism of which few non-Japanese will be aware, but much of the time I found them too constricting and often preferred my interpretation of the poems without the gloss, and I encourage readers to be comfortable reading the poems in their own way; (2) I can't read Japanese but I feel the translations are only serviceable and do not really express the "poetry" within the tanka, that was there underneath.  All in all, a highly recommended insight into another time and culture, showing that we are all more alike than different. [4.5 Stars]