📚📚 Read Japanese Every Day Challenge - Spring 2024 🌸🍡🌱

[fallynleaf]

I was going to post in here yesterday, but totally forgot!

I finished reading 推し短歌入門!! My first Real Book™ in Japanese!

It has been… quite the journey! I very much am feeling like I just came out of a month long intensive course in tanka, haha. I’m still unsure how much I’m actually going to use all of this going forward, like if I’m going to keep writing tanka or not after I write the one for Hyper Misao’s show (which is tomorrow). But I don’t regret doing this project!

I also wholeheartedly recommend 推し短歌入門 as an introduction to tanka if you’re at all interested in the format! I think it does a fantastic job giving you a whole bunch of tools and also teaching you how to approach other people’s poems, and it’s very gentle with the reader and is accessible at all levels of experience. It’s written for an audience who might know nothing at all about tanka, and/or who may have no confidence at all in their ability to write one.

I think it’s also a neat book if you’re at all interested in fandom or 推し活! I think it straddles its two worlds very well. It’s quite unpretentious but is also very grounded.

Difficulty-wise, I can’t say that it was especially easy, though . It’s way harder than literally everything else I’ve read up until this point. I was able to understand I think all of the fundamental things the book was trying to teach me, but many of the tanka examples were still too hard for me to understand. I relied pretty heavily on the explanations the book gave to understand many of the poems, and even with that support, quite a few were still beyond me.

I was extremely charmed by the last section of the book where a group of five people did a couple tanka theme challenges together. One of the people, ひらりさ, said she was interested in both boy’s love and yuri (a fan after my own heart), and another one of the people, 睦月都, was the 歌人 of probably my favorite example tanka in the book, which was about a lesbian couple (though 睦月都’s work is a bit out of reach for me at my current level, because it’s written in 旧かな…).

Both of ひらりさ’s tanka that she wrote for the challenges ended up being about Utena/Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena, which were a delight to read, haha.

Overall, I would say the book is extremely LGBTQ-inclusive! This was the biggest surprise for me, and a very positive one.

Here's what I wrote about most of the rest of it in my study log (warning: long)

@fallynleaf

The last part of the book appears to be a panel between a group of people. Two of them are ひらりさ and もぐもぐ from 劇団雌猫, and as soon as I read that, I was like “wait a minute, I’ve heard of this group before”. And sure enough, that’s the group who edited 推し活英語! We’ve come full circle!!

I suppose it’s not exactly a coincidence, since I’m sure a lot of prominent 推し活 people in Japan know each other just as many big name fans in America know each other, haha.

I’ll update y’all on any notable highlights from the last section in my next update, I guess. But I have basically completed the meat of the book at this point. I feel like if I had to write a tanka for Hyper Misao’s show without reading any further, I’d be more than equipped to do so. But I’m still going to aim to finish the whole book by the 19th!

Some other miscellaneous fun stuff:

We had a conversation in the ADoIJG book club about the dictionary’s use of “adverbial particle” and “case particle”, which were never defined in the book. There were some debates over how useful those categories really were in the modern day. To my surprise, I actually found both words used in 推し短歌入門! Here’s where adverbial particle came up, and here’s where case particle occurred (along with a tanka from the book that I thought was kinda neat as a letterpress person and boat fan).

Thanks to investigating these things a little deeper, I have now fully come around on them haha and think they’re valid categories of particles, though they’re still a bit hard for me to understand. I’m gradually getting there, though. I did appreciate the deep dive because I’m able to understand some things in monolingual dictionary entries for particles a lot better now that I have this context.

I’ve continued to add some words to Anki from this book, mostly technical terms with abysmally low frequency ratings in other media, haha. So far, I’ve added 72 words. Will these words benefit me much going forward? Well,

I also added two more kanji: one is 跨 (be, sit or stand astride, extend over, straddle) from the word 句跨（くまたが）り, which isn’t in any of my Yomitan dictionaries, monolingual or otherwise. Here’s the definition I slapped into Anki from the internet: “俳句・短歌などで、一つの語が二つの句の切れ目をまたぐもの。例えば、「海暮れて鴨 (かも) の声ほのかに白し／芭蕉」では、「ほのかに」が2句と3句をまたいでいる。”

I also added 敲 (strike, beat, hit) from the word 推敲（すいこう） meaning polishing a piece of writing.

Mostly I want to be able to talk about tanka going forward and understand what other people are saying when they talk about it. I don’t know how much time I’ll spend in the tanka world after finishing this project, but it feels like a waste not to take this opportunity, y’know?

Also, I think I was actually able to understand a 旧かな poem in this book without needing help! Here it is:

風のやうに記憶はひかる ふところにLARK（ひばり）を抱いてゐるひとだつた

千葉優作『あるはなく』

The only thing I missed is that Lark is apparently also a cigarette brand, which adds a bit of an additional double meaning.

Something else I found fun is that the author introduces a concept they name イメ短歌, which is referencing イメソン, an abbreviation of イメージソング. As far as the author knows, イメソン has two meanings:

①そのキャラがカラオケなどで歌っていそうな歌
②そのキャラを思わせる歌

I see the same concept in English-language fandom all the time!

In this instance, an イメ短歌 is leaning more on the second definition. It’s basically a way of doing tanka interpretation through the lens of applying it to your favorite characters/ships (the author’s goal appears to be using this to ease people into doing this kind of analysis so that they can go on to do it outside of a fandom/ship framework as well).

It reminded me of some conversations I’d seen in English-speaking fandom about how fandom meta and academic analysis of media have a lot in common and employ a lot of the same skills. I can certainly attest to the truth of that, as someone who has written meta and also academic research papers analyzing film and literature.

The next chapter lays out four aspects of 評 (critiquing a tanka). Here’s an example of how you might apply each of them:

先ほどの、前川佐美雄の歌を引きましょう。

わが魂を釘づけしといて遠く去りかれの名がいま世にうたはれる

①「意味」

主体の魂を「釘づけ」にした、とまで強く表現された「かれ」は、今は遠く離れている。そんな「かれ」の名が、「世にうたはれる」ほど広く知られている。

②「構造」

「わが魂」が釘づけ（固定）されているのに対し、「かれの名」は広く知れ渡っている、という動きの対比がある。

③「表記」

「いま」が漢字だと「今世」に読めてしまうため、ひらがなにひらいてある。読みの上で混乱しないようにという配慮が見られる。「うたはれる」は「謳はれる」という表記でもいいはずだが、ひらがなにするとやわらかい感じがするし、崇拝と言うよりは広く人に受け容れられている感じがする。

④「韻律」

「わが魂（たま）」の「ａ」音、「しといて遠く」の「ｔ」音の連なり。「かれの名がいま世にうたはれる」が「かれの名がいま／世にうたはれる」という分かれ方をしており、「いま」で音と意味が盛り上がる感じがする。

I’m obviously at a disadvantage here, doing this with only intermediate Japanese, but it’s cool how much I’ve learned just from reading this book.

The book also talks about when you encounter a tanka that you don’t understand. For me, this happens quite a lot, haha. The author says that when this happens, you should try to figure out what is causing your lack of understanding:

①文法、語彙が分からない
②知識、教養がなくて分からない
③抽象的で分からない
④なぜこんな歌が作られたのか分からない

Love to be a language learner struggling through all four of these things at once…

The book says: “短歌には「分からない」ものもあります。それを、「自分はバカだから分からない」と思い続けるのは、苦しいことです。” And yeah, it sure is…

I guess in some way, there’s a bit of comfort in struggling right alongside native speakers. Though it also makes the mountain feel infinitely higher. But I like how the book emphasizes that you can still find a tanka beautiful even if you don’t understand it.

I actually got curious and dipped my toes a bit into the #プロレス短歌 hashtag on twitter, just to see if I could find other people writing tanka about pro wrestling. And the answer is yes! However, I wasn’t… overly impressed with most of the poems I was seeing in there . There were some that I liked, but a lot of the others felt very surface-level to me. Maybe the issue comes more from a philosophical difference in how we view wrestling. Or maybe reading this book has exposed me to enough professional-grade tanka that I have become pretentious .

Someone in that tag is a fan photographer, and they like to pair their photographs of wrestlers with a tanka, which is a cool idea in theory, but I found it surprisingly lacking in practice. I think honestly the photo and the tanka are a bit redundant. Being inspired by a photo is one thing, but I think in a weird way, the photo sort of limits the tanka? Part of the fun is that regardless of authorial intent, there are always multiple ways to interpret a poem. Even though all of my poems have specific things that inspired them, I want them to still be able to stand on their own as poems without context needed. If your tanka can’t convey its meaning without needing the help of a photo, I feel like it’s probably a weaker poem.

As far as my own taste goes, I’m starting to gradually get an idea of the kinds of tanka I tend to like, haha. I’m also starting to get an idea of what’s in my own wheelhouse as a 歌人. I don’t think I’ve written enough poems yet to say that I’m stuck too much in one box, but I’ve noticed patterns already, like if I don’t stop myself, I’ll write most of my poems with sort of a distinct 上の句 and 下の句, probably coming from my senryu experience, haha. I think my brain defaults to composing them as a senryu + a second half.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but I have some experience writing very short fiction (mostly in English). I’ve won a couple short story/flash fiction contests. The most important advice I can give for short fiction is that you want to make sure the scope of your story is suitable for the length. So I’ve spent some time trying to pin down the ideal scope for a tanka.

The conclusion I’ve reached is that a tanka is about the space of a gif. Or a photograph, I suppose. But there’s movement in tanka, and there isn’t in a photograph, so I feel like a gif is more appropriate.

I think in some ways using pro wrestling as inspiration for tanka is cheating because pro wrestling is already basically chock full of 景と感情の取り合わせ (more on this later) moments. I’m also already somewhat seasoned at isolating these moments in gif form, and that skill absolutely translates to thinking up potential tanka inspiration.

I don’t think my poems are really “good”, exactly. I’m sure they read strangely in ways I didn’t anticipate due to a lack of language ability, and they’d probably get ripped to shreds by an actual seasoned poet, haha. But I consider them good enough to share as long as I feel like they achieve what I want them to achieve, at my current level of ability. When I feel satisfied with every single mora in the poem and can’t think of anything that would be more effective than what I have written, that’s when I consider a tanka to be finished.

A lot of the book covers different ways that people break the formation rules for tanka, so many of the poems I wrote here were deliberate practice at breaking the rules, which is something that is very hard for me. I suppose my personal view is that if you’re going to break the rules, you should have a very good reason for doing it, and breaking the rule should ideally add additional meaning to the poem in some way.

I tried to attempt as many of the different techniques as I could, though there are some gaps because many of the techniques are extremely hard for me at my current level of ability.

And here are the longer explanations for the other poems I’ve composed so far (Discourse obliterates the 全角 (em quad; there’s a letterpress word for you) space, so I’ve cheated it back in using preformatted text. So if something looks slightly off, that’s why):

@fallynleaf

にこやかなベビーフェースの面脱いで生地を一刀 両断に切る

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

The inspiration for this was Hyper Misao’s heel turn in 2019, where she took off her hero mask and cut it in half with a pair of scissors. It is, to this day, one of the most powerful images in pro wrestling to me, even though it happened before my time as a fan:

(For a bit more context, read one of my favorite wrestling essays).

But this poem is really about heel turns in general, not just Misao’s. Heel turns are one of those things that I feel like most non-wrestling fans both understand and don’t. It’s a trope that has largely escaped pro wrestling and made it into the wider media landscape. But in pro wrestling, there is a… certain decisiveness to it, I guess. Generally heel turns are the result of a character reaching their breaking point after a long period of frustration or disappointment until finally they just decide, “this is it. I’m done.”

As John Darnielle explained it here,

But one of the greatest things that can happen in wrestling is when the good guy…. in front of everybody, turns heel, turns bad. And the reason it’s great is because you can relate, right? You watch him and you go, “Oh man. He’s decided he doesn’t care if people hate him now. He’s going to get what he wants.”

Neither you nor I will ever have that moment in our lives. It’s not gonna happen. Cause you do care if people hate you, YES you do. And you’re always gonna. You can’t rid yourself of that because if you do rid yourself of that then you’re a sociopath, and you have major problems. So you have to live in the complex world. But in wrestling, we get to enjoy vicariously the sight of somebody going, “I am going to embrace evil, and get out of here alive, and that’s the only thing that matters in my entire life at this moment, in front of all these people.” This is called Heel Turn 2…

Here’s a better quality recording of the actual song (here are the lyrics). I believe I first heard Heel Turn 2 when it premiered, actually, since apparently it premiered on Welcome to Night Vale in 2015. But I had absolutely zero appreciation for it at the time, haha, and it didn’t leave any impression on me. When I heard it a few years later as a wrestling fan, I was absolutely floored. I loved it so much, I immediately ordered the entire album on vinyl.

I feel like with all of this context, I’m not sure I need to explain my tanka poem, haha.

The element I started with for this one was 一刀両断. That jukugo was the entire crux of the poem. However, it’s 8 mora—an impossible number for tanka! So I realized I would need to split it in order to make it fit (I’m unsure if this counts as a 句跨り or not, since 一刀 and 両断 are both technically words in and of themselves). Then I thought since I was already splitting the word across two lines, it might be extra fun to 一刀両断 the 一刀両断 itself and physically split it with a 一字空け.

So I formed the rest of the last chunk around that word: 生地を一刀 両断に切る, using 生地 for brevity of mora (and also just because I think it’s an evocative word), and then ending with に切る. The ending was actually the hardest part of the poem to come up with! I wanted to do just 一刀 両断する, but it’s one mora short… The reason I was reluctant to add the “cut” meaning was because I felt that was already inherent in 一刀両断 (especially with the split), so it felt redundant, and I wanted the “take decisive action” meaning to be equally felt. But after thinking about it for a long time, I ended up just sticking with the に切る. I felt that the last two lines needed to be equally portioned chunks, so it felt like making the poem 字足らず on one side would weaken it.

The first half came together pretty easily. I knew it was essentially going to say “taking off the mask”, but I had some choices to make as far as the wording for “mask” went, as well as the other words. I decided on “面脱いで” first because it was that perfect 5 mora I needed for the 三句目, and 面 is such a delightfully versatile word that is also used directly for describing masks.

ベビーフェースの took me a bit longer to come up with, but it was the exact perfect word. I was a bit reluctant to use such a wrestling-specific term, because I felt that it might limit the interpretations a bit, but it is ultimately a poem about wrestling.

にこやかな was probably the hardest part to come up with (besides trying to pin down the exact verb I wanted to use at the end). I wanted a 5-mora adjective for that 初句, but it was tough choosing one that felt like it added anything substantial. Then I came up with that one and was like “yes!! This is it!”

I thought that “taking off my smiling babyface mask” perfectly conveyed the specific moment my poem was about (Misao taking off her hero mask, though her mask itself doesn’t have a mouth portion, she stopped smiling while she was wrestling maskless as a heel), and also conveyed the concept of heel turns in general, the idea of stripping away a smiling good guy act that’s all artifice because you simply can’t bear to wear that face anymore.

Then “cutting the material in two pieces with one stroke” describes the exact moment, whether literal (in the case of the inspiration) or metaphorical, where the heel turn happens. Here’s where the character makes a very extreme choice that they can’t reverse.

The poem doesn’t describe what comes after that because I don’t think the “after” really factors into a heel turn. The decision is made without considering the after.

In pro wrestling, there is a certain beautiful simplicity to a heel turn because the heel/face roles are very much something that characters are able to move between (and many wrestlers will probably play both within their careers, sometimes switching multiple times). In real life, as John Darnielle described, you can’t just do that. You can’t turn evil suddenly and like get away with it without consequences.

You can in pro wrestling, though.

Characters often do horrible things to each other while they’re heels, then ultimately reconcile with each other and forgive each other for what they did. Or a character will do something terrible and then get forgiven by the audience despite that.

Pro wrestling is largely about these big, irreversible decisions, which, paradoxically, result in states that are themselves very reversible.

After taking off her hero mask and cutting it in half near the beginning of the year, Hyper Misao turned face again at the end of 2019.

(But that would be a whole different tanka).

念願のベルトを巻いて上に立つ 王が一人で呪いを背負わなければいけない

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

This one isn’t based on any moment in particular, but rather a common aspect in pro wrestling as a whole.

My friends and I are always talking about how championship belts are cursed. It might not make sense to non-fans, but it’s true. I guess this poem was my attempt to convey that even to someone with no exposure to pro wrestling.

I started with the concept of “championship belts are cursed”, but if the poem just said that, it’d be very boring, so I had to come up with a more indirect way to say it.

The author of 推し短歌入門 described the 一字空け (one em space between words) as very effective for 景と感情の取り合わせ (combing a scene and a sentiment), which is one of the main ways to create tanka poems. I thought maybe I’d try that technique here and see if I could find a way to convey the sentiment I wanted.

So I used the first half of the poem purely to establish a scene: 念願のベルトを巻いて上に立つ, a description of someone standing at the top wearing the belt that they’ve longed for, and then I paired it with 王が一人で呪いを背負わなければいけない, a description of a king having to bear the curse alone. The implication is that despite being longed for, the belt is actually a heavy burden, and not only that, but it is one that must be borne alone.

If you asked me “why are championship belts cursed?”, I would say that the number one reason is because they have a tendency to cause wrestlers to torch their relationships with other characters (and often destroy their bodies in real life…) only to realize that the title doesn’t bring them real happiness, but instead makes their lives a lot harder. The real curse, the real burden, is that it’s lonely at the top.

You might have noticed that this tanka is substantially more than 31 mora. This was my attempt at making a 字余り tanka, a poem with excess mora!

Here’s the mora breakdown:

(5) ねんがんの
(7) ベルトをまいて
(5) うえにたつ

(7) おうがひとりで
(15) のろいをせおわなければいけない

So it’s actually entirely an orthodox poem until that very last line. I decided that the excess mora worked for that line because the length of the 呪いを背負わなければいけない line is itself too much for the line to bear. I could’ve cut down the なければいけない stuff and kept the same meaning, but I decided since I was going over, I might as well go ridiculously over.

Something kind of fun is that if the poem ended with 呪いを背負う, it would actually be perfectly orthodox:

念願のベルトを巻いて上に立つ 王が一人で呪いを背負う

But because the curse must be borne alone, it becomes too heavy.

「待ってて」「いつまでも」振り返らずにバルコニーから飛んだ不死鳥

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

First of all, astute readers might’ve already noticed this, but the 初句 is only four mora, so it’s 字足らず. There’s also a 句割れ in the 二句目, and maybe a 句跨り between 二句目 and 三句目 (I’m not sure if splitting a compound verb counts as 句跨り or not?). I didn’t intentionally set out to make this a 字足らず example, but when I came up with the first chunk of the poem, I realized that adding anything else to 「待ってて」 would hurt the effectiveness of the poem, so I left it as is.

This was a really tough poem to write because I wanted to write a tanka about the infamous balcony moonsault in Kota Ibushi vs Kenny Omega at Budokan Hall in 2012. You can read more about that match and that spot here. That spot got Kota Ibushi banned from Budokan Hall for six years. For a long time, the version of the match on the official DDT site had that moonsault edited out of it, and the only way to watch the match with the moonsault spot intact was to watch a really low quality pirated version of it on Dailymotion.

(Here’s a gif of the moonsault).

But I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to say about that moonsault. All of the things that made that moment so beautiful and romantic felt like concepts that were too difficult to contain in 31 mora. Like, you’d need to explain the entirety of pro wrestling first.

Starting with the core of the idea, the first thing I wrote down was バルコニーから + 飛ぶ. But I was worried that it would make the reader imagine a very dark interpretation of why someone might jump off a balcony, so I had to come up with a way to let a reader who doesn’t know the source material understand that the character leaping/flying off of the balcony would be okay.

I decided to put phoenix in there because it was obviously a perfect symbolic fit for the inspiration (Kota Ibushi), and it also has the advantage of conveying to the reader that this was someone who was capable of doing this safely (a bird), and they could/would come back repeatedly, so the poem is not describing someone attempting suicide or something like that.

Something important about the balcony moonsault is that Kota does it without even checking to make sure that Kenny would be there down below. He just goes for it, with total confidence. Factoring that in, I had 振り返らずにバルコニーから飛んだ不死鳥 for the last half of the poem (intending to have a 句割れ in the 二句目), but I had no idea what to do with the first chunk.

I tried out a few things that didn’t really work at all. I was still sort of stuck on “How do I make the act of jumping off of the balcony without looking back feel like a gesture of romance?” But the only ideas that came to mind either stated it too directly (and were therefore trite) or they were way too many mora (I had a grand total of 10 to spare). So the poem sort of stalled out there for several days.

Then I thought of those Golden Lovers tweets from last year, specifically Kota’s “待ってて” and Kenny’s “俺はいつまでも待てる”, and I had kind of a revelation. With the balcony moonsault, the romantic part is that Kenny stands there waiting to take the move, and Kota jumps without checking to see if he’s there. It’s that trust, that assurance that the other person will be there on the other side no matter what crazy leap of faith you may attempt.

The Golden Lovers’ whole relationship is sort of a series of those leaps of faith. And yet, they’re always there for each other in the end to catch each other even if it hurts, and even if letting go of the other person itself hurts, they’ll still be waiting on the other side for the other person to come back.

I felt that all of that was sort of contained within 「待ってて」「いつまでも」. Like with just those two words, you get someone asking someone else to wait, and the other person saying they’ll do it as long as it takes, which establishes a relationship of deep mutual trust, that no matter what happens in the meantime, the characters will be together in the end. I briefly toyed with variants on 待ってて to attempt to arrive at that magical five mora, but I felt that adding anything else took away from the sort of soft, desperate brevity of the original request, so I ended up keeping it.

Putting it all together, the 「待ってて」「いつまでも」 sets the stage for 振り返らずにバルコニーから飛んだ不死鳥. Ironically, I think the average reader is likely to interpret the second half as referring to the phoenix leaping off of the balcony and flying off without looking back (at someone standing on the balcony with them), rather than the pro wrestling interpretation of the phoenix doing a backflip off of the balcony without looking back at the person standing down below (who’ll catch them when they fall), but I think the crux of the interpretation is actually the same for both.

In both cases, there is implicit trust: for the first interpretation, the person at the top of the balcony will wait as long as it takes for the phoenix to come back, their faith unshaken despite the phoenix seemingly throwing themself wholeheartedly off of the balcony without regret. In the second interpretation, the trust is on the part of the phoenix, trusting that the other person will be waiting at the bottom to catch them. I feel like both interpretations have been true for both halves of the Golden Lovers on multiple occasions.

So I feel like in the end, the tanka managed to both capture that microcosm of that single balcony moonsault and also sort of the dynamic of the Golden Lovers’ relationship as a whole. I’m really happy with it, more than I expected when I first started composing the poem. When I came up with the 「待ってて」「いつまでも」 to complete the poem, the tanka made me genuinely emotional.

試合後。リングに横になっていておれの小指できみの手ふれる

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

This one is another generic pro wrestling poem and not about any specific example. One of my favorite things in pro wrestling is a concept that my friends and I refer to as “match aftercare”, which is basically the things wrestlers do to comfort and reassure each other after they put on an incredibly demanding physical performance wherein they pretend to hurt each other (and often do hurt each other for real at least a little bit).

Match aftercare often involves the wrestlers hugging each other or physically clutching each other. But sometimes they can’t do that because their characters wouldn’t do that, either because they’re a heel who wouldn’t be affectionate like that, or because their characters are supposed to hate each other’s guts.

Often in these cases, you’ll still see them physically reach out to touch the other person in some way, but they’ll do it much more subtly. Grabbing the other person’s ankle, or just resting an arm on top of the other person’s arm, or in the case in my poem above, perhaps gently touching the other person’s hand with their little finger in the barest of touches. The smallest possible way to say “I’m alive; I’m okay; I don’t hate you; I love you”.

The actual composition of the above poem came together pretty easily for me. The only thing that gave me a bit of trouble was 試合後, which is unfortunately just 4 mora. I cheated a bit in this poem and let the 。 count for a 5th (normally punctuation doesn’t count). Besides that, it’s pretty straightforward.

Something I wanted to play around a bit with was the 表記, the orthography (how the words are written). You might have noticed that おれ, きみ, and ふれる are all in hiragana, with no kanji. One of the things that 推し短歌入門 talks about is how writing all in kana gives words a softer feeling. I decided I wanted that softer feeling for this poem, since it’s describing a very tender moment.

Compare:

試合後。リングに横になっていて俺の小指で君の手触れる

試合後。リングに横になっていておれの小指できみの手ふれる

I also liked how 横, 小指, and 手 sort of stand out among the string of kana. I feel like those three words alone sort of tell the whole story here.

踏ん張ってあなたのチョップ（あい）を受け止める背水で潮待つように

Explanation of the inspiration and construction

This poem was born out of my desire to play around with furigana in tanka. To do that, I decided I would write a poem about the many chop vs kick exchanges between Go Shiozaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima, particularly the one in their 2020 singles match, which is to this day one of my absolute favorite wrestling matches.

As the tag team AXIZ, Go and Katsu have a move called “Endless Love”, which involves them chopping and kicking their opponent between them. Go has described the chops and kicks as “love” coming down on the person from both sides. The part that makes me so crazy about this move is the fact that when they face each other on opposite sides, they basically do Endless Love without a person between them to receive the chops and the kicks.

(Here’s a gif of Endless Love, and here’s a chop and kick exchange between Go and Katsu in their singles match).

So for this poem, I started with あなたのチョップ（あい）を受け止める, which slotted nicely in the 上の句. 踏ん張って was a natural fit to complete the 上の句.

Then I had to figure out what I wanted the poem to actually say. “Bracing myself and receiving your chops (love)”. Okay, now what?

I picked the poem to be from Katsu’s point of view for maybe a ridiculous reason, which is that I didn’t want it to be read as being about an abusive relationship, and I thought that チョップ was more unambiguously a word that would be understood in a martial arts setting whereas キック maybe wouldn’t be. The mora count didn’t matter, since either way it’s counted as “あい”.

Katsu’s viewpoint ended up being I think a more interesting narrative perspective anyway, though, since he was the betrayer in the relationship.

I decided I wanted to try using a simile with this poem, so I slotted ように in at the very end. Then I had to figure out what exactly I was comparing receiving the chops to. I came up with 背水 for sentimental reasons, since the word was recently used for Go.

Here’s my Japanese friend explaining it to me:

@fallynleaf

NOAH has been uploading these little stat cards for each of the N-1 participants, which I’ve been having a blast translating. (Why is NOAH the only promotion I watch who regularly does fun kayfabe stats for their wrestlers? DDT and TJPW need to get on this. I miss when every DDT big show had Abema stats…). Here’s Kenoh’s and Katsu’s, for example. Some highlights on Katsu’s are that his favorite food is “豪さんの作ったパスタ” (“pasta made by Go-san”) and one of his two max stats is 愛 (love).

Here’s Jake Lee’s and Go Shiozaki’s. Go also has 愛 as one of his max stats . His favorite food and comment both sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. He said “刺激物” for his favorite food, which Yomichan tells me is “stimulants”. I googled it to try to get a better answer, and it looks like (judging from his regular twitter content) he’s probably using it to refer to spicy food, though it can also mean caffeine, alcohol, chocolate, and lots of other stuff.

For “背水一戦”, I had to do a bit of digging. I thought it might be referring to the second definition my monolingual dictionary has for 背水, which says it’s an abbreviation for 背水の陣, which means last stand/having burnt one’s bridges/fighting with one’s back to the wall. I wasn’t entirely sure, though. Thankfully, my Japanese friend helped me out! Here’s what she said:

「背水一戦」は、古代中国のことわざ「背水の陣」を踏まえた表現です。「背水の陣」は、あえて逃げ場のない場所（背後に河などがある地形）に陣を構え、死を覚悟して戦うことで勝利を導くという意味です。 「背水一戦」はひとつひとつの試合に、そうした覚悟で挑むという意味です💪

In this use here, I liked the image of Katsu basically fighting from a position of desperation, where he can’t go back a single step further because he’s burned all his bridges and his only option now is to fight his way out. He’s bracing himself for Go’s chops because he’s backed himself into a corner now and he can’t relent.

The remainder of the 下の句 was tricky, though. I was drawing a complete blank, especially because the chops were coming from the front, which seemed at odds with the 背水, imagery-wise. But thinking about it, I realized that Katsu was sort of in an unwinnable position, here. The chop vs kick exchange was a stalemate. He would never relent, but he would also never gain any ground on Go. He’d backed himself into this corner with no real path out of it, and eventually the universe would punish him.

My first thought was 波を待つ, but I thought of 潮 and immediately liked that better because 1) the tides convey the inevitability better than waves, and 2) 潮 is the “Shio” in “Go Shiozaki”. So the poem gained a bit of an additional meaning where Katsu is taking in Go’s あい with the chops from the front and he’s able to hold his own there, but ultimately he will be overtaken by Go in the form of the tide at his back. It’s almost an Endless Love, in a sense…

(The real Katsu ultimately softened and reunited with Go in early 2023, after tormenting his former partner for years. I think there’s some relief in just letting the tide wash over you and put an end to your bitter standoff on the shore.)

I just opened a poll in my study log to help me decide what to do with the last word in the second tanka here! Please come weigh in!

I’ll probably be back in this thread one last time to share whatever tanka I end up writing for Hyper Misao’s produce show, haha!

[nyxqueenofshadows]

18th april

home post

just did the renshuu book club difficult pick today cos it was quite long and i struggled with bits of it. it’s is about a girl and birthday parties from the perspective of her parents (mainly her dad). wouldn’t be surprised if parts of this were influenced by the author’s own experiences, it kinda has that vibe. oh and some stuff on pixiv

today’s nhk article was this one plus the entries on というと and というよりは in aDoIJG

[polv]

<< Prev

Q2 of 2024 | Week 3

4月18日 (木)

• Three Kingdoms 2 reread (4-6/30)

• DEATH NOTE 短編集 (0-22%)

• STEINS;GATE 比翼恋理のだーりん

Words of the day

• 応(いら)え = an answer; a reply. Written language, but more commonly 応(こた)え.
• 煉獄(れんごく) = Purgatory - Wikipedia
• レジ袋(ぶくろ) = (disposable) shopping bag. Not エコバッグ.
• 曲(ま)がりなりにも = somehow or another; even if imperfectly

---

[Marifly]

April 18 | Home post

Today I read one chapter from スーパーカブ plus a little from the VNs Island and Clannad. My reading is all over the place, but I don’t mind!

[frootlooper]

Home Post

I’ve been really liking とつくにの少女 so I went ahead and ordered the remaining volumes. Some of the chapters are quite quick reads too depending on which characters are in them. Also started re-reading Witch Hat Atelier. I’ve read the first 11 volumes in English but some friends of mine were reading them for the first time so that made me want to re-read them. This time I figured I’d do it in Japanese.

４月１０日
リビングの松永さん 11

４月１１日
とんがり帽子のアトリエ Ch 1-2

４月１２日
とんがり帽子のアトリエ Ch 3-4

４月１３日
とんがり帽子のアトリエ Ch 5

４月１４日
とつくにの少女 Ch 16-17

４月１５日
とつくにの少女 Ch 18-20

４月１６日
文豪ストレイドッグス 太宰、中也、十五歳 2 Ch 5

４月１７日
文豪ストレイドッグス 太宰、中也、十五歳 2 Ch 6

[Akashelia]

home post
2024年4月18日

	Title	Read today	Currently at	Notes
	Secret	2 episodes	86/98	—
	シャドーハウス	5 chapters	99/175

@frootlooper

Also started re-reading Witch Hat Atelier. I’ve read the first 11 volumes in English but some friends of mine were reading them for the first time so that made me want to re-read them. This time I figured I’d do it in Japanese.

Sounds like the perfect timing to join the IMC

[macalys]

Home Post and thread

4月18日木曜日

花野井くんと恋の病 vol. 4, 14 pages.
Nothing to say, it went pretty well. I’m rushing a bit here because I don’t want to be distanced in my reading by the anime release.

[hughlings]

4月18日 | Home post

Today I started アオハライド volume 7.

• アオハライド (7) (pp. 1-25)
• DoBJG: ことが出来る; ことになる; ことにする (32%)

[Redglare]

Home post // April 18

・ 今はもうない - Switch Back (31% → 35%)

Today was last day of internship! Spending every day learning a lot over the past two months at the workplace… I’m going to miss them so much, they’re such a nice bunch. Gave me a card to wish me good luck at my new workplace, packed with their feelings of support, I couldn’t help but cry when I read the card. After drying my tears, reading it one more time made me cry again so I’ll have to put away the card for now, it’s too much, my heart can’t take this much, haha TuT

[lucylavelle]

April 18th!

5 pages of the Orange light novel today.
I’ll be switching back to bookclub reading for a few days from tomorrow though.

(Home Post)

[RebBlue]

四月十八日・Home Post

	Title	Today	Progress
	レンタルおにいちゃん (1)	14 pages	26%
	Sentence Patterns for JLPT N5	8 pages	32%

レンタルおにいちゃん is a fun read, Sentence Patterns Book is becoming more of a chore so I may drop it for the rest of the week.

[Jintor]

19 April | Study Log

	Title	Type	Natively	Progress
	ルックバック	manga	22	0 → 100% (complete)
	ダンジョン飯6	manga	29	15% → 30%
	不思議駄菓子屋1	book	24	90% (no change)
	また、同じ夢を見ていた	book	25	60% (no change)

• Finished Look Back in two sessions last night, surprisingly easy for how complex and moved I felt. Highly recommended.
• Continuing Dungeon Meshi 6, will do another chapter tomorrow. This was a lot easier than last week, probably because half the chapter was action.

[araigoshi]

2024-04-17 — 2024-04-18

Previous | Home post | Next

Date	Name	Type	Amount	Time
2024-04-18	ゆるキャンプ１	Manga	Chapter 4-5 53 pages	25m
2024-04-17	ゆるキャンプ１	Manga	Chapter 3 23 pages	10m

So last night I decided to take ゆるキャンプ to bed for some reading in bed.

Honestly, that was probably a mistake. I’m finding it deceptively difficult. It’s not the most text dense, which I suspect brought it’s Natively rating down, but it’s definitely one of the harder manga for me with all the camping terminology. You would think that having watched season 1 of the anime would help with that… but all that terminology has kanji too, and the anime didn’t help with that

Also while reading I found some inverse furigana, which is the first time I’ve seen that. I expect this was extra unreadable on digital copies lol

[Jintor]

The reverse furigana trick where characters say one thing and mean another is really fun and one of those things it must be a real pain in the ass to convert to English

[WeepingWeeb]

Home Post | Study Log | ０４月１８日

Resource	Progress	Visual
Tadoku L3 Stories	6/24	■■□□□□□□□□ 25%
Tadoku L4 Stories	0/9	□□□□□□□□□□
Tadoku L5 Stories	0/3	□□□□□□□□□□
NHK Articles	1 → 2	■■□□□□□□□□
Shirokuma Cafe	8%	□□□□□□□□□□
老女的少女ひなたちゃん１巻	1/9	■□□□□□□□□□ 11%
DoBJG	7/205	□□□□□□□□□□ 3%

Read a quick NHK article cause I forgot to read the rest of the day

[araigoshi]

I’ve seen contradictory furigana often enough by now, where they spell out different terms in kana than what the kanji means all right, but this is the first time I’ve seen kanji there, I think.

Although maybe some of the digital manga I’ve read has had kanji there and I missed it by going “Uhh, unreadable blob in the furigana position, better just assume it’s the obvious reading”

[Jintor]

i wish it was more common to use thatruby text in english lol

[DIO-Berry]

April 18th

	Book	Pages
	とんがり帽子のアトリエ	start - 35

I decided to start reading ahead in a few book clubs since there are so many that I’m currently in and I want to make a plan for success for staying active in them.

[taiyousea]

4月 18日

	Book	Natively	Progress	Type
	気になってる人 Vol. 2	L 23	0% → 100%	Manga
	新にほんご 500問 N2	L 33	75% → 78%	JLPT
	とんがり帽子 Vol. 2	L 27	12% → 18%	Manga

i saw that volume 2 of 気になってる人は男じゃなかった has been out for a while so who am i to deny myself the simple pleasure of ravenously devouring it i’ve been keeping spotify open while i read so i can play songs as they’re mentioned in the manga :3c

i’m sure someone has made a playlist of all the songs/artists noted in this series, i’ll see if i can find one ^–^

See you next time!!

edit: i finished kini like two hours later so instead of waiting for tomorrow’s update i’ll just edit today’s

↑ zoom back up to home thread

[Jintor]

@taiyousea

i’m sure someone has made a playlist of all the songs/artists noted in this series, i’ll see if i can find one ^–^

if they haven’t, we should make one…