Exactly five years after the March 11, 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, Josai University Educational Corporation invited modern verse and haiku poets for a memorial event, “Unruly Cradle”: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters. Held at Josai’s campus in Kioicho, Tokyo, the event included both round table discussion and poetry readings of works treating various aspects of the earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown, and the ongoing responses in Japanese culture and society. Organized and sponsored by Josai’s International Modern Poetry Center, the event featured ten poets and drew an audience of over three-hundred academic researchers, poetry lovers, students from Josai and around Tokyo, and general visitors wanting to mark the important anniversary together.

Featured poets were haiku poet Takano Mutsuo and free verse poets Jeffrey Angles, Arai Takako, Hirata Toshiko, Mizuta Noriko, Ōsaki Sayaka, Shiraishi Kazuko, Takahashi Mutsuo, Tanaka Yohsuke, Tanikawa Shuntaro, and Tian Yuan. Mizuta Noriko, Chancellor of the Josai Universities, opened the event with a welcoming address, and Prof. Jordan Smith of Josai International University served as MC and moderator.

Starting at 2:30 P.M.―timed to begin just before the moment the quake struck Northern Japan―Chancellor Mizuta opened her remarks noting, “It is simply magnificent how Dr. Angles’ translations convey our experiences to people around the world.” Her remarks were followed by a montage of photos by Arai Takako, capturing scenes of the aftermath. 2:46 P.M., the precise moment the tremors began, was passed with one minute of standing in silence to memorialize and pray for the thousands of victims. Prof. Angles (Associate Professor at Western Michigan University) delivered a keynote address, “The Great East Japan Earthquake and Japanese Poetry,” contextualizing the poems and framing the discussion to follow, drawing from his new book These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March11, 2011 Disasters (JIU Press, 2016), advanced copies of which were available at the event. The volume features Angles’ critical introduction and historical framing of the role poetry has played in the ongoing processes of making meaning in the aftermath of 3⁄11, followed by his translations of poems by many of Japan’s leading poets along with several relatively new but powerful voices, including Yoshimasu Gōzō, Suga Keijiro, Sasaki Mikirō and Wago Ryōchi. In his address, Prof. Angles noted, “After the earthquake, poetry―more so than other literary genres―responded quickly. The position of poetry in society was reconsidered.”

During the discussion with ten of the poets, Takano remarked, “Traditionally, haiku composition has had little to do with current affairs, but many haiku were born of this earthquake. I was reminded of the powerful feeling given by their fixed linguistic structure of just seventeen syllables.” Takahashi commented, “Words give birth to the sciences, to nuclear power, and that in turn has birthed calamity. Words are powerless, however they are the sole vehicle for expressing the notion that this world does not belong to exclusively to humans.” Arai introduced her poetry written in the Kesennuma dialect (a local variation of Tōhoku dialect), explaining, “I felt that learning the language of Tōhoku was my personal duty as a poet.” Mizuta commented that she felt somehow “disaster resonates with the traumatic origins of a being closed off in our hearts, and from that place is born expression which reverberates toward the other.” Tanikawa responded to a question from the audience, saying, “Words are such that, depending on how they’re used, can be powerless or meaningless, so we have to create within us our own language, and we must consider how to accept the words of others into ourselves.”

The discussion was followed by poetry readings, with all eleven poets reading in turn. Takano Mutsuo opened with seven haiku about the earthquake, including:

Earthquake of the limbs
Extremities rumbling
Simply rumbling

The readings proceeded with poems collected in, These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March 11, 2011 Disasters. Takahashi lead with his reading of his, “These Things Here and Now,” the anthology’s eponymous poem followed by Ōsaki’s “Noisy Animal,” Tanaka’s “The Mustard Pot,” Mizuta’s “Sea of Blue-Green Waterweed,” Tian’s “Tsunami,” Hirata’s “Do Not Tremble,” and many more. Tanikawa concluded with his “Words,” with the lines: “But words did not break ⁄ Were not washed from the depths ⁄ Of our individual hearts ⁄ Words put forth buds ⁄ From the earth beneath the rubble.” Finally, Shiraishi Kazuko took the stage with a long scroll in hand, encouraging listeners to hear the poem not as her own voice but as the voice of the tsunami itself. She slowly unrolled the scroll as the read through the poem, “Ocean, Land, Shadow,” thundering, “Ocean, land, shadow, Iwanuma tsunami, tsunami, the tsunami has come!” She urged the audience, some moved to tears at the power of her poetry and performance, “Everyone, please pray―with your whole spirit,” and concluded the event with a burst of applause.

In the foyer just outside the hall, a special exhibition titled “Dreams of Earth’s Surface,” by painter and printmaker Yanagisawa Noriko, was displayed. The critical anthology, These Things Here and Now: Poetic Responses to the March 11，2011 Disasters will be published as of March 31 and available in bookstores soon after. (For questions or to purchase (3000 yen) please call (03) 6238-1526.)