Dispatch From Falling: Translation as Finding, in Tokyo & Elsewhere
Alvin Pang discusses poetic connections discovered on a return trip to Japan.
Early October, 2025. Summer faltering; autumn not quite ready to take the reins. Most days are still warm: over 30°C. I am in Tokyo for a poetry translation exchange, curated and organized by Japanese translator and scholar Rina Kikuchi, in collaboration with Australian poet and publisher Shane Strange. I have not been back to Japan, which I used to visit annually, since before the pandemic. Stopping by the grand Naritasan Shinshoji Temple, minutes from Narita airport, I take in Matsumoto Ryozan’s “The 500 Disciples of Buddha,” a massive carved wooden frieze encircling a large temple hall that took a decade to complete. Each disciple is depicted deeply engaged in an activity of life: reading, meditating, fishing, cooking, washing clothes, feeding pigeons. Each figure has been given a unique face. Every bird sports a full plumage of feathers. Some of the disciples are shown releasing eels into the river, as part of the Buddhist practice of releasing live creatures from captivity. Nearby, there is fresh eel for lunch, a local delicacy.
* * * *
After downing two morning coffees, I hasten in a light drizzle through Tokyo’s Jimbōchō book district—voted by Time Out as the “Coolest Neighborhood in the World 2025”— to the renowned Meiji University, where everyone else has already arrived and are in conversation.
I am a member of an itinerant party of anglophone poets assembled by Dr Strange: mostly Australian, all associated with his publishing outfit, Recent Work Press. Each of us has been thoughtfully paired up with Japanese counterparts by Professor Kikuchi (aka Rina) to translate each other’s poems into Japanese and English respectively. We are then to share our collaborations in a well-attended series of bilingual bookshop readings that same week.
We are met by our host at Meiji, the formidable poet, critic and translator Keijiro Suga, who is easily the most distinguished and least dressed up member of our exchange, in a white beard and T-shirt. After a round of introductions, each pair finds a quiet corner and got to work. To bridge the language barrier, a bilingual aide (a graduate student or faculty member) sat with some pairs as needed to facilitate discussion and help with the translation.
In an inspired choice by Rina, I have been paired with the fluently bilingual poet and translator Yasuhiro Yotsumoto. We are both over fifty, have both been Fellows at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and share a distinctly cosmopolitan bent, both in our lived experiences and our poetics.
Yasuhiro proposes an approach to our co-translation, which I readily accept. Eschewing automated tools or word-by-word translation, we take turns to read and then explain one of our poems, line-by-line, helping our partner understand its sense, tone, rhythm and intention in gestalt, then leaving them to craft a new version in their own language. This turns out to work quite smoothly for our collaboration: we discover our writing shares a wry and irreverent sense of humor; a penchant for the absurd in the mundane; for unsettling received meanings in language; a fondness as well as vexation with the histories and societies we hail from; an existential wistfulness. Our chosen poems also seem to relate in thematic pairs, which is how we choose to approach the exercise. It is a pleasurable but painstaking process that takes a full working day—we hardly pause for lunch; Yasuhiro grabs a few snacks from the nearest convenience store and keeps working. Needing a physical break, I step out into the rain for a quick bite and coffee, and to mull over a turn of phrase.
By the time we are done for the day, we have translated (or, rather, transcreated) three of each other’s poems, which we then share with one another. Not having any Japanese, I cannot tell what my partner has wrought of my pieces, but the cadences seem to fit. And Yasuhiro seems to approve of my renditions of his work. We agree to try to collaborate on more translations in future if we find the chance.
Later the whole group heads out for a meal and drinks together, where my translation partner and I hit on a shared love of good sake.
* * * *
At the bilingual reading next evening at the art collective and book space honkbooks in Tokyo, we showcase our translation efforts. It becomes clear that Rina’s curation and matchmaking have been masterful. Each pair of poets shows an uncanny affinity: remarkable for two individuals from different countries who have only just met a day ago. Shane Strange and Zon Samine riff off each other’s semantic intensity. The elder statesmen, Paul Munden and Keijiro Suga, proffer quiet grief and gravitas. Penelope Layland and Kanie Naha deliver a trance-inducing, embodied recital. Es Foong and Kazue Nakamura mirror each other’s ferocity and verve in performance and politics. Yasuhiro and I, channeling a bit of our inner tricksters, draw laughter. Each pair delivers a compelling reading in different ways. Some alternate between Japanese and English original poems as Yasuhiro and I do, generating a kind of dialogue between them. Some pairs feature a clutch of poems by one poet before turning to the other’s works, in both original and translation. A few pairs weave their works into one seamless sequence, making it nigh impossible to tell which poem is whose.
The reading goes on for two hours, but the audience, spellbound, is in no hurry to leave. There is a sense that something special has just taken place. Among the listeners is a friend: the Japanese-American poet Mariko Nagai, currently a writer-in-residence in Tokyo, whom I had last lunched with in Singapore. Another lady, whose name I unfortunately miss, strikes up a conversation about the dearth of awareness in Japan about its imperialist past, including its actions in World War 2. We agree historical awareness is vital: not out of recrimination or a desire to settle debts, but because ignorance is a breeding ground for future cruelty. Already nationalistic politics is on the rise in Japan. Poetry is important; exchanges are important; person to person encounters and connections are important. Anything that holds back the fog that heralds war.
* * * *
Some days later a van proclaiming the platform of a right-wing political party drives past me on the street. A sharply dressed Korean executive in a Japanese conglomerate and her Swedish guests buy me a beer at a streetside yakitori joint. A young woman, the bartending proprietor of a craft beer place in Himeji, tells me her intention, using a translator app, to travel and get to know people.
In Hiroshima, the city marks 80 years since the fall of the atom bomb.
In the port city of Kobe, I sit with Harumi Kawaguchi for another set of co-translations, this time with Rina acting as linguistic bridge. Harumi’s poetry—luminous, cryptic, informed by gender concerns—at first bears little relation to mine. With further reflection and discussion, it turns out there are philosophical confluences between us: a reckoning with moments of transformation that knock perception askew. We do not have time to work on more than one or two works apiece, but these we discuss with considerably more depth than I have done in a while, with anyone.
* * * *
Mid-October 2025. It is properly cool now. An old friend, a novelist, meets me for dinner, checks one sushi joint and then opts for a second that seems friendlier to foreigners. The omakase spread is expertly rendered and very reasonably priced. The chef warms to us and answers my questions. He says younger chefs are leaving Japan to work around the world, while old hands like him prefer to stay at home.
A fellow patron starts singing the sushi master’s praises, insisting he is the best around. It turns out the patron is a renowned orchestral musician who has played all over the world, including a stint in Singapore. A poster for his upcoming concert is on the wall of the restaurant. I hand him my name card as a courtesy. I am delighted when, a few days after I return to Singapore, I receive an email from him, asking to keep in touch.
放生 Catch and Release
Alvin Pang
“The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”
-Roland Barthes
“Barthes Tells the Story Wrong”
-Sridala Swami
“the lover writes the love letters for herself, the lover. The loved one is constructed in the frame of the love letter, the literary thing, the beautiful, dirty object”
-Larissa Pham
“ ‘Fangsheng’, or ‘releasing animals’, to demonstrate compassion and earn merit, is a traditional Buddhist ritual in which captive creatures are freed, usually at a particular time. This practice has a long history since the Spring and Autumn Period in China and remains popular today. “
-https://www.asla.org/2021studentawards/3324.html
I wait for you. You wait for him. He waits for peace. Peace waits for silence. Silence loiters in the corridors of speech. Speech dashes against the balustrades of distance. Distance closes the heart but opens other gates. Behind the lover that is, the lover that could be. ࿐ ࿐ ࿐ The chest contains and constricts. Stretches to fit. Throws fits. Prefers to be left asleep, gathering familiar dust. Waiting that becomes its own orchard. Fruits preterition. Sprouts cunning. Seeds distraction. Waters woe—or, really, the unclinging of sparrows, hence a lightness, the flutter of freed hymns. Him|whom they fly to, drawn by a likeness of rain. The tongue’s journeying eased, as if ended. Red desert yielding to oasis where the heart stops to bloom. ࿐ ࿐ ࿐ as a bone-weight leaves grave be, lifts wing. the mass of it necessary to break air, insist upward, midwive midlife into long exhale ࿐ ࿐ ࿐ Litigation of litany. An incision sharp as that which lets a swan song spring, excises the sonorous organ. For a lost infirmity, grief: heavy but a holding and so proxy for fullness. ࿐ ࿐ ࿐ If writing about place becomes writing about time, what of the pen’s halting trek across—against—the blinding salt? To wait: to elsewhen here | elsewhere now. To circle, to reach for a momentary knowing. To love: to release. To re-lease. To trap time in order to free it.
Everyday Japanese
Yasuhiro Yotsumoto
In the back teeth of the Japanese language something’s stuck Flip flip flip I can’t stop worrying at it No matter how I pluck at it with fingertips Or poke at it with a toothpick, it won’t come out. I phone Etsuko-san. She says she’s on the Taiheiyō Engan Jitensha-do Bike Path right now. “Cycling Road,” she clarifies, even though I did not ask her to. “I’ve been looking at Mount Fuji all this time. What’s up?” “Something is stuck in the back teeth of the Japanese language” “The Japanese language? What sort?” “Just plain everyday Japanese. Like the news on TV, Pawnshop flyers, poetry.” “For real? So you read poetry. What kind?” “So-called contemporary poetry.” “Is that so?” Etsuko-san asks, her voice lower, “But is that everyday Japanese?” Something is stuck in the back teeth of the Japanese language. This did not happen only today or yesterday. It’s just that I did not realize it until now, but the truth is it’s been there since I was born. Or perhaps it’s been there since the Nara Period. “Does it feel like there’s a bit of Chinese caught in there?” “Some kanji stroke-tip tripping up your ABCs or what?” Estuko-san, who was good at making Dad Jokes, laughs to herself. No, I’m not quite talking about kanji or foreign loanwords or ―― From the other end of the phone line comes a deafening RAWWRRRR Was it the wind rushing down the slopes of Mount Fuji Or the rumble of a large truck crossing an iron bridge? For an instant I have a vision of Etsuko-san’s clunker of a bike parked on the side of the road all by itself. “Why not try flossing with Hangul or something?” Saying that, Etsuko-san suddenly shouts out in Korean. “Huh, what did you say?” “The sea, it’s huge, man.” She says it this time in plain everyday Japanese. “Man, sakura shrimp are the best.”
Translated by Alvin Pang, with the author. Original Japanese below:
フツーの日本語
日本語の奥歯に なにかが挟まっている 舌の先で突っついて ぴらぴらさせるのがやめられない 指先で摘まんでも 楊枝で突っついても外れない エツコさんに電話した いま、太平洋沿岸自転車道にいるんだという 「サイクリングロードだよ」 訊いてもいないのにそう言い直した 「さっきからずーっと富士山みえてんの。で、なあに？」 「日本語の奥歯になんか挟まっちゃったんだよ」 「日本語って？ どんな？」 「フツーの日本語。テレビのニュースとか、 おたからやのチラシとか、詩とか」 「シ？ 詩なんて読むんだ。どんなの読んでんの？」 「いわゆる現代詩とか」 「へー、そうなんだ」エツコさんの声が低くなった 「でも、ああいうのってフツーの日本語？」 日本語の奥歯になにかが挟まっているのは きっと昨日今日のことじゃない 気づかなかっただけで、生まれた時から いやひょっとしたら 奈良時代くらいからずーっととそうだったんじゃないか 「漢字が挟まってるって感じ？」エツコさんは おやじギャグが得意だ 「シンニョウの端っこのところが〈いろはにほへと〉に 絡まってるとか」そういって一人で笑った いや、だから、漢字とか外来語とかって話じゃなくて―― 電話の向こうからゴォーという凄い音が響いてきた 富士の裾野を駆け下りてくる疾風なのか 鉄橋を渡る大型トラックの轟きか 道ばたにぽつんと止まっているエツコさんのチャリが 幻のように浮かんで消えた 「ハングルかなんかでフロスしてみれば？」 そういうとエツコさんは いきなり韓国語でなにか叫んだ 「え、なんていったの？」 「海、でっかいよ」 今度はフツーの日本語で言ってくれた 「サクラエビ最高だよ」
