This tanka poetry collection is a cry from the heart of farmer and
poet, Sato Yutei who foresaw and experienced the Fukushima Nuclear
Power Plant accident which occurred in March 2011. The three tanka
poems below are picked up among the 132 poems selected for this
book. when will it explode? there's a bluish white light hidden,
deep within the six nuclear reactors lined up in a chalky row where
the nuclear power plant came to bring prosperity in our town many
hearts have been impoverished another worker at the nuclear power
plant has died - this time, too, his illness was not clearly named
Since the accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, the vast
majority of Japanese people have reversed their former views on
nuclear energy: now they say it should be done away with,
completely. A previously unimaginable situation has arisen: there
is to be a temporary shutdown of production from all of Japan's
fifty four nuclear facilities. In such a situation, many Japanese
who took in the hand the pocket edition of 'A Bluish White Light',
the work of the poet, Sato Yutei, and cast eyes over it, must have
felt a powerful shock-wave running through the heart. Subsequently,
as we undertook a close reading of these tanka poems, our mind
became more and more steeped in the 'cry from the heart' appeal of
this poet who had both foreseen the nuclear accident and then
experienced its impact on his own life. This 'cry' has been
transformed into the conviction that all of humankind must take
joint ownership of the whole universe. It is for that very reason I
sought to have these tanka translated into English so they could
reach people throughout the world. The great difficulty of
conveying, through English translation of the tanka, the profundity
of such a 'cry from the heart', was a real stumbling block, I felt.
However, this idea became a reality when I was fortunately
introduced, through unexpected channels, to an Australian
translator, Amelia Fielden who has gained a high reputation,
world-wide, for her excellent work on translating contemporary
Japanese tanka into English. I shall summarise below the Afterword
of 'A Bluish White Light', written by Mr Sato, who composed these
tanka. "Until March 11th 2011, when the great eastern Japan
earthquake disaster occurred, I had been living in Okuma town which
abuts the six nuclear reactors of that notorious Fukushima Number
One Nuclear Power Plant. In neighbouring Tomioka town stood the
four nuclear reactors belonging to the Number Two Nuclear Power
Plant. Together these two plants had been producing over nine
megawatts of electricity. All of this power had been transmitted to
the Tokyo metropolitan area. Even before the major earthquake
occurred, there were big arguments, and deep regrets expressed over
the introduction of nuclear power facilities to our land. Utter
ignorance was one of the reasons, another that the region was
particularly backward - for the situation where people, seduced by
promises of economic efficacy, originally welcomed the power plants
with open arms. Then the thing that was bound to happen eventually,
happened. Even the generations which come after us are unlikely to
forget this date: 11th March 2011. The name Fukushima has
reverberated in every corner of the world. Ultimately my home town
was designated as a 'Difficult to Return Area'. We have ended up
having no home, or land, or graves to which we could return. In
other words, there was no light at hand with which we could make
our way through an expanding world of darkness. You can imagine how
the suffering of the disaster victims is reaching its extreme. The
fate of the people who were born here and who must die here, their
deep-felt concerns and fears and sense of powerlessness, I have
given voice to in my poetry."
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