Kawara no Sadaijin

Our closing poet of this year's set is Minamoto no Toru, son of Emperor Saga. He is better known by his court title, 'Minister of the Left, of the Kawara District'. He died 1100 years ago next year, at 74 years of age.

His poem is another one of those complicated embroideries of puns and allusions, only the most basic of which comes out in foreign language translation:

Various English translations of many of these old poems utilize the word 'love', but when we refer back to the original Japanese, we usually fail to find a matching term among the words used there. Rather than being stated outright, the feelings have been implied, as of course is the case with many things in this country, and this can sometimes make things quite difficult for people like myself who were brought up in a different culture.

All during the fourteen years that I was together with the Japanese mother of my children, I tried to be conscious of this major difference in our backgrounds, and many times wondered about what was really being meant by things she said. The reverse situation was also full of 'danger'. Many times she would find a 'message' underlying my words that I had not intended to send at all. With such a couple, communication can sometimes be very much a case of 'skating on thin ice'.

Please don't take these comments of mine to imply that I am now against this kind of inter-cultural partnership. I do think though, that only those men who are relatively sensitive to implied messages, and those women who can be forgiving of a partner's apparent insensitivity, should enter such a relationship. But, now that I think about this a bit more, perhaps what I have actually been describing is not just the specific situation involving a Western man and Japanese woman, but the relationship between men and women generally, even those who share the same cultural background. I know from experience that we all focus on the 'Western-ness' or 'Japanese-ness', and tend to forget that underneath those things, we are all a lot more similar than we are different.

o how about me? Would I try again with another Japanese woman? I think so. After all, it would be a shame to throw away all the experience I gained during that 14 years!

As usual, I seem to have wandered away from talking about printmaking ... Thank you very much for being part of another very good year. Until next time ...

December 1994

Translation - William Porter 1909