The Voice calling to make up could be heard Chapter2

On that morning, as I held the receiver to my ear, Nishi Reiko came over and sat on the adjacent desk, waiting for the phone call to end.
"Don't you think discussing mahjong in the morning is inefficient?" "Don't say something like a nagging sister-in-law from the morning."
"Well then, how about a coffee break?"
"All right, I'm in."
I readily agreed to such conversations.
"All right, wait a moment. I'll make one more phone call."
After ending that call, we entered a cafe called "Baobab" on a backstreet. I always sit at the counter because there's a beautiful mama there.
"I'll have coffee."
"I'll take an Americano."
And Reiko, peering into my face, said,
"Could you introduce Shiro Hagari to me?"
"Do you mean asking for a manuscript?"
"Yes."
"It's pointless. He doesn't write."
"That's the feeling I get. But I want to meet him once. I feel a tremendous charm."
"He's a revolutionary of words."
"More than a poet, he feels like a solid rock containing all possibilities."
"Solid rock is a profound expression. That's the kind of man he is."
"The energy to create a world solely through words is a formidable thing."
"That's why that man is dangerous. He doesn't waste time making advances on women."
"Dangerous men are charming, you know."
Her eyes were sparkling. They were eyes that gazed directly at things, moving straight ahead.
I met Shiro Hagari six years ago. A grandiose project I proposed, titled "Young Prophets," was adopted, and we featured about five dubious individuals in the pages. Looking back now, it seems like a rather eccentric concept. We brought in a fortune teller to talk about Japan's destiny, and had an avant-garde dancer engage in a nonsensical discourse on the fusion and separation of body and spirit. Somehow, it all felt like a bit of an oddity.
Among them, there was only one person whose words seemed to carry a profound weight of life. That person was Hagari. He alone possessed a light, like that of the genuine, which didn't carry the suspicious aura. At that time, he was around thirty-two or thirty-three years old but had already released ten volumes of poetry. It may sound like the profile of a well-known poet, but back then, he was completely unknown, and those ten volumes of poetry were what they call self-published works. If it were done by someone financially comfortable, no one would be surprised, but Hagari's life was akin to abject poverty. Living such a life, pouring almost all the hard-earned money into something that wouldn't yield a single yen, was truly nothing short of astonishment.
He believed that the creative process, including not only writing poetry but also printing and selling the finished product, completed the act of creation. Each creation was like a brick, and by stacking those bricks, he could build a fortress of words. I once visited his room because I wanted to know what kind of fortress the ten volumes of poetry had built. In a cluttered and dark room of about four and a half tatami mats, so full of miscellaneous items that there was no place to step, his "Galaxy Cottage" was created in a wooden apartment nestled in the messy alleyways of Asagaya.
Upon opening the door, for a moment, I thought it might be a garbage dump. That was Hakari's created fortress of words. He disliked being called a poet and often expressed his preference for being referred to as a word farmer. In reality, the title of poet did not fully capture him. Looking at his history alone, it seemed as if he were a rat in the underground sewer, crawling around here and there, or to some, it appeared as if he were ascending and descending some kind of staircase to hell. The artist's apprenticeship is a period filled with hardships, and adversity is often considered the greatest challenge, as one continues to create while struggling through the four agonies.
Now considered one of Hagari's masterpieces, "Bitches" was written during his time as a manager at a soapland. It was an extensive poem exceeding ten thousand lines, featuring explicit and vulgar sexual language to an extent that one might wonder how it escaped being exposed as obscene literature. If you hop on the track, he wrote another work titled "Long Juku Long Distance Runner," also exceeding ten thousand lines. If you visit a used paper exchange store, you'll find a book with the lengthy title, "Every time, it's the usual paper exchange. Will exchange old newspapers, old magazines, rags, etc., for high-quality facial tissue, toilet paper, etc."
While the titles of these poems may evoke a sense of playfulness, their content is serious and profound. The narrator, engaged in the exchange of paper, was once a revolutionary fighter in the student movement. The seriousness of the content can be imagined. When he became a subway construction worker, he completed a work called "Iron Moles." This piece depicted the excavation and solidification of the underground, aiming to carve out the heart of the metropolis. After portraying contemporary nests of darkness and decay, he produced a healthy and powerful poem titled "TOBITACHI worker" subtitled "Always high, always blue." This poem was written when he became a demolition worker for houses and buildings, and I believe this experience marked a significant transformation in his poetry.
 
Not only houses but even buildings were demolished entirely by the vigorous labor of a demolition worker, and his physique matched the intensity of the job. His solid body evoked the image of a lumberjack, and his tanned skin brought to mind a fisherman. It was an appearance that didn't quite fit the typical image of a poet. His poetry was no different. If poetry can be likened to shooting, carefully pulling the trigger for each shot, Hagari's poetry was more like a machine gun spraying blindfolded gunfire everywhere. Disregarding forms and rules, it was just an abundance of words, words, and more words. Everyone must have marveled at the flood of his richly destructive words. His vocabulary seemed endless, and the act of writing poetry seemed to be igniting a fire in the arsenal of words within him. Once he earned enough money to publish a book, he quickly threw himself into writing, taking only a short period of two or three months. Even if he had sketched something while working, within just a couple of months, he could complete an extensive poem exceeding ten thousand lines in one go.

 Where does this energy, this vitality, come from? When thinking about many poets in the world who write and erase, struggling to produce only a few hundred lines of poetry in a year, Hagari appears as someone beyond the ordinary scope of a poet. Indeed, something explodes within him, and it can only be described as an excess of life, a burst of life. Once the explosion is complete and the finished work is thrown into the town's print shop, he sets out for the next target, ready for the next sortie.

 He named himself a "word farmer," and just as the most crucial element for agriculture is the soil, farmers in the past used to spread compost made of fallen leaves, manure, and urine to enrich the soil. Similarly, it seems that when Hagari found himself at the bottom of society, engaging in somewhat shady jobs, it was to enrich the metaphorical soil of words within him. The seeds he planted grew from decayed and soiled matter. When the ears of the crops ripened, signaling the fruitful autumn, he swiftly harvested them. Whether they sold well or not was inconsequential. What mattered to him was the act of writing and sending it out into the world. His determination and conviction, believing that each book would inevitably build a fortress of words, were akin to that of a farmer. Like farmers clinging to their land in the face of storms or floods, enduring droughts and frostbite, he was truly a word farmer.

Every time I read his poetry, I found myself pondering where his poetry originated. His poetry possesses a peculiar charm, unlike the lineage of Japanese, let alone Western poets, and I wondered if it represented a new type of contemporary poetry. According to one contemporary poet, Hagari's poetry has an antiquated feel, and despite the abundant use of contemporary language, its content is quite simple. Indeed, compared to many contemporary poems that remain perplexing no matter how many times you read them, Hagari's poetry seemed simple. He depicted colossal iron kingdoms and nouveau riche empires, yet there was the scent of mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, and the fragrance of thriving forests, grass, and flowers. Despite portraying the dens of the metropolis and darkness, there was the scent of soil. Reading some of his extensive poems, it seemed as if he were repeating a single message—humans must return to the earth, they must return to nature once again. This is an ancient idea, a classical thought that invariably emerges when humanity gets lost in civilization. If this is true, then the criticism that his poetry is old-fashioned and simple may indeed be accurate.

However, what he attempted and aimed for was not simple. Hagari sought to guide the Japanese people, who had become entangled in the complexity of the modern era, back to nature through the power of words. In my opinion, the decisive divergence between contemporary poetry and his poetry lies here. Hagari's works, regardless of the specific piece, evoke the grandeur of a symphony or an epic, and this required an absolute faith and allegiance to words. The contemporary poets, who have long abandoned epics and are now unable to write even if they stand on their heads, attack the narrative quality reminiscent of epic or dramatic poetry in Hagari's works as simple and outdated. However, this attack seems to narrate their retreat and the decline of their words.
The peculiar complexity of contemporary poetry, the obscure nature that seems to reject words, appears to be a straightforward attempt to escape from reality. And perhaps, it is not merely an attempt to escape from words. If that is the case, the criticism and attacks from contemporary poets might have been something for Hagari to truly rejoice about. According to him, contemporary poetry was like a "pale blue flame, a fading fire."

One day, while delving into his thoughts in that familiar four-and-a-half tatami room, he pulled out a thin, Galley-printed booklet. On the cover of this booklet, which didn't exceed twenty pages, was written "Miyazawa Kenji and Whitman," and it seemed to be Hagari's starting point. After graduating from junior high school and entering the workforce, Hagari, driven by an insatiable desire to study, attended night high school. There, he encountered a young English teacher named Ryokichi Murata, who, being a poet himself, strongly encouraged Hagari to write poetry. It took Hagari six years to graduate from night high school, and during that time, Murata had him write a treatise on Miyazawa Kenji while he wrote one on Walt Whitman. These treatises were compiled into a single collection titled "Miyazawa Kenji  and Whitman." Taking the booklet home and reading it, I was deeply enlightened by Murata's discussion of Whitman, and it was the first time I delved into Whitman's extensive poem, "Leaves of Grass." Looking into "Leaves of Grass" helped me better understand Hagari's poetry. He once said:
 
"Japan is always filled with imitations, perpetual derivatives of Baudelaire, wasteland imitations. But why hasn't there been an imitation of Whitman? Maybe I'm doing something that should have been done sixty years ago."
And he also said:
"Miyazawa Kenji wasn't a poet, you know. He was a revolutionary. The poem 'Ame ni mo Makezu' ('Not Losing to the Rain') still conceals his entire being, but there's nothing that misunderstands him more than that poem. He was a revolutionary. He tried to transform humanity and the world with the plow of words."
When I met Hagari, I was diligently writing short stories and harboring ambitions of making my mark in this world with a pen someday. So meeting him was very stimulating. I never missed the readings held by his group in a small café, especially after they rented it out for their events.
He was a quietly composed man, seemingly gentle and amiable, someone who appeared to have never engaged in conflict. No matter how heated a debate became, he never seemed to be consumed by anger. He had a large, embracing quality that could take everything that happened around him as trivial and insignificant. Among the numerous anecdotes surrounding him, one stands out: there was a time in a seedy bar when he got involved with some thugs or drunks, and Hagari apparently got knocked down. As he lay on the ground, wiping away the blood flowing from his mouth, he stood up with a slight smile, offering the other cheek as if to say, "Give me another punch." The drunk or thug, whatever he was, suddenly knelt down, repeatedly apologized with his head against the ground. It sounds like a scene from a mysterious character in an 18th-century novel, but that's how far removed Hagari was from any form of conflict.

However, when it came to his poetry, it suddenly blazed with the fire of anger. It seemed as if he wrote poetry to avoid being consumed by the deep and intense flames of that anger. If a man with such intense anger actually disliked engaging in overt conflicts, where could his true nature be found? It's a valid skepticism, but elusive qualities are often characteristic of remarkable individuals. He was a truly fascinating person. Like the principle that a small strike produces a small sound while a large strike produces a big sound, when you approached him with your whole being, you were irresistibly drawn into the unfathomable vastness and depth within him. Even in the early days when he was still unknown, his poetry collections sold a couple of hundred copies each, and he already had a considerable number of fans. His romantic life was also glamorous, as he boldly claimed to have four or five lovers at any given time.
 
It's been about three or four years since I parted ways with this captivating man, but during this time, he has gradually made appearances in the media. Finally, the media seemed to have glimpsed a part of his colossal soul. Now, the name Hagari Shiro radiates a unique light and resonance in a corner of the media.
On a Sunday evening, I waited for Reiko at a snackbar in Shibuya. I sipped beer while watching the waves of people flow along the promenade through the terrace-like windows on the second floor. Observing the ebb and flow of people was enjoyable. Men passed by, women passed by. Women who had experienced heartbreak passed, and men who had been rejected also passed. Men tired of life passed, and women in the midst of romantic excitement also passed. Women, like mares in heat, passed, and hungry men walked by with gleaming eyes.
Reiko usually dressed in jeans, giving off a university student vibe, but on this day, she seemed to have dressed up quite a bit. Her purple, fluttering skirt was incredibly alluring.
 "What's going on? Did you go on a matchmaking date or something?"
"It's you who should be going on matchmaking dates, right.  If you don't get married soon, you might end up left on the shelf."
"I'll be fine. There are plenty of young women in this world, including Reiko here."
"Oh, come on. Saneto-san was in love with me. So, I need to think about it a bit."
"How are you going to think about it?"
"Of course, I have to consider how to turn him down. Rejecting someone without hurting their feelings is surprisingly difficult, you know?"
"What are you talking about? I would never propose to someone like Reiko."
"You shouldn't say it so clearly, I think. It wouldn't be interesting if there wasn't that dangerous thrill of wondering when this person will make a move on me, don't you think?"
"What a joyous story, indeed."
We had a light meal at a salad bar and headed to a place called "Fourteenth Century," where Hagiya's reading event was taking place. The venue was a large Izakaya with exposed thick pillars, giving it the appearance of a mountain hut. Now, all the tables were removed, and rows of plain chairs lined the space. The chairs were so crowded that people were standing, and more and more customers kept coming in after us, making it impossible to see the walls around.
Thinking back to the first time I heard Hagiya's reading six years ago, the annoyance I felt then now seemed nostalgic. He insisted that poetry comes to life when voiced, and whenever he presented new work, he always held a reading event. At that time, their group used to rent a cafe in Daikanyama for these reading sessions and gatherings.
 
In that small shop where fifteen or sixteen people made it already impossible to find a seat, I listened to the recitation of a poem called "Long-Distance Runner," which spanned over ten thousand lines. The reading began around seven o'clock with the opening lines depicting the departure of a long-distance truck from Tokyo. The recitation continued endlessly, and because it was so lengthy, by the time it approached the destination around Aomori, the clock had already struck eleven. That night, for over four hours, we unfolded an epic scroll, but I was overcome with anger several times during that period, feeling like getting up and leaving. No matter how interesting a story, it becomes tedious after an hour, and even the most patient person would feel satisfied after two hours. That seems to be the limit of human endurance, but breaking that limit for over two additional hours bordered on complete madness. There wasn't a single person with an expression suggesting they found it interesting.

People squirmed to alleviate the pain in their sore buttocks, muttered about torture, or even started snoring as if to say they didn't care. One man stared with his mouth agape, as if he couldn't believe that something unimaginable was unfolding right before his eyes. In short, everyone was fervently wishing for it to end quickly, but oblivious to such wishes, Hagari continued to read steadily. Frustrated and irritated, I kept cursing him for his verbose and polluting language. When the recitation finally ended, scattered and deflated applause erupted, not for his reading but as a relief that it was finally over, and also as applause for enduring the unbearable.
 
However, now this poem has become one of my favorite reads, which makes the past situation quite amusing. I occasionally pick up this poem as if recalling something important, and now I understand his grand attempt that I couldn't comprehend back then. The poem tells the story of a young man driving a massive truck named "Ton-Ton" toward Aomori, which is the destination of a long-distance delivery truck. However, the young man himself has no idea where he is headed. Everyone is just driving because everyone else is, and stopping was a frightening prospect.
The young man has no choice but to plunge into the pitch darkness. The poem vividly depicts the flow of his consciousness and the rumbling of the truck, creating a sensation as if someone had squeezed out and mixed all the colors of paint onto a palette. It was a collision of words, a flood of words, an explosion of words. With such a whirlwind of confusion concealed within, the ten thousand lines flow like a majestic river. One critic praised this epic poem as the modern Don Quixote driving a colossal truck—a magnificent contemporary epic.

When the venue darkened, a young man with a guitar appeared on stage, and, by skillfully entertaining the audience with humor, he sang several sweet songs in a sweet voice. After he disappeared, a man dressed entirely in black suddenly appeared on stage, shouting loudly. Everyone was surprised and looked toward the man, then a woman in white attire appeared on the other side of the stage, screaming with a shrill voice.
The black-clad man and the white-clad woman exchanged suggestive, literary, philosophical, and humorous lines, but to me, it all sounded like gibberish. Looking at the program, it was mentioned as "Black and White Mixed Composition," authored by a female poet gaining popularity. Clearly, to gather such a large audience with a 1,000 yen entrance fee, it was necessary to provide entertainment that captivates with song and humor. Shiro Hagiwara had become a leading figure in the new literature, and the literary movement he led had flourished enough to attract an audience of around three hundred people. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic for the modest reading sessions held in the small coffee shop in Daikanyama.
 
"This is something I've been contemplating for a while, and it's also a declaration directed towards Japanese poets. I've been relentlessly pursuing the essence of words. For a poet, words are akin to the very land they tread upon. However, contemporary poetry often feels somewhat stale, and I've come to believe that it disrespects our own literary landscape. Therefore, I've wandered in search of new lands to find new words, driven by a quest for a fresh language."
He spoke slowly, and the passion embedded in his words gradually filled the room. Continuing, he explained the themes and content of the poems he would continue to write, and the audience was drawn into his words. Excitement and empathy spread throughout the room, culminating in a burst of applause.
Through the recitation that day, Shiro Hagari presented the potential for new poetry, sharing his fervor for creative expression. The audience was captivated by his unique perspective and enthusiasm.
 
"The word 'revolution' is now on the verge of death, and the reason for this is because it has been tormented so much. I've beaten it black and blue, turned it into a promissory note. But the reason I have to use it is that words are pushed to that extent, which means that humans are cornered to that extent. When I start preaching something like this again, they mockingly say, 'Here goes Hakari with his grandiose speeches again.' Well, my words are only worth being mocked, but still, I've come to think that to establish words on this earth, you have to strike a real hoe into this earth."
 
His recitation began. It was completely different from anything I had heard or read before. At the outset, Gutenberg was portrayed as the child of the devil. The fetus, gripping a needle in its left hand, emerged from the birth canal, narrating Gutenberg's abbreviated biography. He went on to tell stories, interweaving allegories and aphorisms, such as how the revolutionary invention later known as printing was actually inspired by a grape press, and how, immediately upon achieving success with this printing technology, he was betrayed by a disciple named Fust. In his later years, Gutenberg went blind and departed from this world as if a wandering vagabond. Later, I realized that Hagari was using Gutenberg as a symbol, portraying him as the beginning of the corruption of language, the origin of the defeat of words.
 
At that time, the only profitable thing to print was the Bible, and Gutenberg and his group printed a large quantity of Bibles. Why did he go blind? He went blind because he saw something he shouldn't have seen: the evil spirits slipping slimily into the words of God. The printed Bibles unleashed these evil spirits. We couldn't help but focus our attention on this mysterious proposition that Hagiwara presented. He skillfully lured us into a trap, and we found ourselves compelled to unravel the mystery like characters in a thriller. The atmosphere became akin to reading a suspense novel, and at this point, even an all-nighter seemed worthwhile to expose the culprit.
 
 
As Hagari proceeded with his calm and steady reading, in this vicinity, his pace quickened slightly, and he spoke as if being driven towards something, sounding urgent. It truly evoked the sense of approaching the final movement. Human language had seemingly lost its power. Unveiling the true identity of this devil seemed an impossible task. It might already be too late. Perhaps nothing could be done anymore. Borrowing the power of "David," who defeated the giant with just a single stone, might also be futile. However, in our language, Japanese, there is power. "Japanese can be a language of resistance." Japanese has the capability for every form of expression. Hagari delivered his final words into the attentive audience, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Japanese can become a language of resistance." The future might not hold a clear path, but that's precisely why words matter. Words are the beginning of the world. We must reclaim language. Humans must once again grasp language in their hands.

Thunderous applause continued endlessly. It was indeed a passionate applause that ignited the hearts of the nearly three hundred-strong audience.
The enthusiastic applause continued indefinitely. It was certainly a passionate applause that warmed the hearts of an audience of around three hundred people.
Still excited at the Segovia Bar on Dogenzaka, Reiko exclaimed, "He's an amazing agitator."
"Yeah, he's a life agitator."
"He said to reclaim our words, but maybe we're just producers of a type of language called magazine jargon. Not human language."
"Just terms to sell?"
"Simply producers of words to meet deadlines."
"Well said. That's exactly it."
Meeting Hagari after a long time, Reiko might have felt a sense of guilt, perhaps because she had escaped from the act of writing her own words. Filling magazine manuscripts and writing short stories were completely different activities. Writing a short story required relentlessly extracting oneself. I had given up on that painful process.
"Hey, Did you figure out what those two demons are all about?"
"That's a symbol, isn't it? Two or three would have been fine."
"Oh, no, it has to be two. It wouldn't make sense if it's not two."
"Why is that?"
"It won't make sense logically unless it's two. Those are demons
called Mechanism and Machine.'"
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is. To move a massive machine, you have to make the mechanism massive. To make the mechanism massive, you have to make the machine massive. I believe this battle between the two giants has exponentially enlarged the era called modern times."
It seemed He was advocating for the overthrow of the machinery and mechanism that were the backbone and steel frame of modern society. In that case, it amounted to declaring war on the world.
"He said he would continue writing for a year."
"He also mentioned it's not just words; it's to strike down the real core."
"So something is going to start a year from now?"
"Taking up arms, perhaps?"
"He believes in turning the other cheek."
"There are times when you have to change your principles."
What exactly was he going to start? But I understood. No matter what he started, he would likely be defeated. Reality is overwhelming. Those two demons are enormous. The more serious they are, the more they will be blown to pieces. However, he continues to walk his own path single-mindedly. He walks only to purify his own words. I thought that man might actually be a true prophet.