Yuri Kageyama

TURNING JAPANESE poetry and reading by Yuri Kageyama

TURNING JAPANESE a poem by Yuri Kageyama
Film and Photos by Ian Thomas Ash
Reading by Yuri Kageyama
Wincester Nii Tete on percussion and Hiromichi Ugaya on bass at The Pink Cow in Tokyo for a “Looking At Fukushima” event May 7, 2013.

TURNING JAPANESE

a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Take architecture:
We take space that’s smaller than a toilet
Create a garden to express the Universe
Todaiji Temple grandeur hierachy
It doesn’t even use any nails

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Take ikebana:
Flowers and herbs and blades of grass
Sculpture ecology Basho-esque balance
Homage to God’s perfection of design
It doesn’t even last a week

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be fore sale
So be proud

Take law and order:
Our trains are clean, run always on time
Apology on the PA if they’re two minutes late
The homeless politely take off their shoes
To get in their cardboard homes

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Take politics:
They tell us we have a democracy
Imported direct from the US of A
A new prime minister every year or so
What’s his name _ Koizumi, Abe, Fukuda, Aso, Hatoyama, Kan, Noda _ Abe again?
Please remember!

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Take women:
Excuse me, I mean, Take girls:
Uniform miniskirts, eyelash extensions
Never have jobs or grow older than 13
But grow Barbie’s breasts

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Technology:
Robots, Pokemon, gadgets galore
Attention to detail, precision with vengeance
We get everything right _ unless something goes wrong
Like a nuclear meltdown

Turning Japanese is not masturbation
Could even be for sale
So be proud

Celebration
Revolution
Masturbation
Nuclear nation
Hydrogen explosion
Can I have your attention
Masturbation
Radiation
Nuclear nation …..

Haiku Speak _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Haiku Speak
_ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Waaaaaah! So much like Wow!
A Child. Fluttering Sakura.
Language. A Moment.

LOOKING AT FUKUSHIMA

The Asian American Journalists Association presents
“LOOKING AT FUKUSHIMA _ An Evening with Hiromichi Ugaya,”
a talk, photo slideshow and discussion session with a veteran journalist documenting a post-nuclear disaster landscape.

THE PINK COW
5-5-1 Roppongi Minatoku Tokyo Roi Building B1F
TUESDAY May 7, 2013 7 p.m. – 10 p.m.
2,500 yen for a Great Buffet is the only charge. Drinks pay as you go at the bar.
A public English-language event.
Come on time to catch a musical performance opening the event.
Musicians and poets welcome for Jam Open Mike to close the event.

Hiromichi “Hiro” UGAYA is a veteran journalist, photographer and educator, who has devoted his life recently to intensive coverage of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and the plight of the tens of thousands of people the accident has displaced. A former reporter at Asahi newspaper and writer for AERA magazine, he has authored more than half a dozen books on security issues, media criticism, Internet technology and Japanese pop culture. A graduate of Kyoto University, he holds a Master’s in International Security Affairs from Columbia University. His latest book “Fukushima’s Lost Seasons” is a poetic photo essay of the serene flowers and trees of the region that have been invisibly devastated by radiation. He is also a bassist and performs regularly at Tokyo clubs.

Dec. 12, 2012, The Very Special Day _ a Prose Poem by Yuri Kageyama

Dec. 12, 2012, The Very Special Day
_ a Prose Poem by Yuri Kageyama

My birthday this year is so very special because Dec. 12, 2012 is that one day that goes 12-12-12, and that can happen only once and there is no 13-13-13.
I am going to be six years old on this so very special day.
And so everyone knows this is so very special, especially Mama who keeps saying it will be so very special.
I started having birthdays when I started going to ABC Pre-School. I guess I had them before, but I was so little like a baby so I don’t remember those birthdays.
My friends from ABC Pre-School came over for my birthday and we had a Pinata. That’s a little blue and pink horse, but it’s made of paper and so we take plastic baseball bats and we keep hitting it and hitting it and hitting it, and it’s got lots and lots of candy inside it.
Then Mama did a special quiz with questions like: What’s yellow, cuddled together and good?
And my friends said things like Sponge Bob, but I knew the right answer was French Fries because Mama and I go to the acquarium when it’s free to get inside, and that’s what we get each time _ French Fries.
It was funny because every question like that, I knew all the answers right away.
Then we had cake and ice cream.
I got presents. I got a car and a spaceship and a book and coloring pens and so many things.
One of my friends wanted to take the spaceship home, just to borrow for a while, and I said OK, but his Mama said No, that’s for your friend who doesn’t have that many toys and you have so many toys at home.
What a very special day.
Then last year, that’s when we moved to Japan, and the birthday was still so very special, Mama said, and we invited friends at Blue Bird Kindergarten, but everyone was too busy on Dec. 12, 2011, and only two little boys came.
But it was still so very special.
I don’t know why Mama was acting so angry about everyone was too busy, and she said it wasn’t that they were busy at all, but because they didn’t like us because we were Japanese American and not Japanese, and our neighbors didn’t like it that Mama worked because all the other Mama’s stayed at home and did housework.
I think it is sad that Mama works all the time, and she should be like all the other Mama’s.
But like she says she is working to feed me and buy my sneakers and put a roof over our heads so I think it is OK.
We still had cake and ice cream, and we wore very special hats that Mama made out of green and blue and red paper with sparkly stars on them and so I was proud to wear my special hat. I got two presents from those two little boys who came.
I don’t know what is going to happen on Dec. 12, 2012, like I said the 12-12-12 is a very special day, but Mama says we are going to make it special just by ourselves this time.
She looked angry again when she said this and also like she was going to cry and I felt like I was going to cry, too, though I don’t know why because we are talking about a very special day, and that’s a happy thing.
So I thought about what could be a very special day for Mama, and so I asked her: “Mama, what would you like to do on your funeral?”
Mama stopped moving all of a sudden, and I thought she might even spank me because it was so all of a sudden, though she hardly ever ever ever spanks me.
That was how sudden it was.
Then she went back to normal and said, “I want a lot of beautiful music.”
So I said very quickly to catch up with her suddenness, “Mama, I will play that music. I will.”
Then she reached out and hugged me, and she smelled like soap and my favorite blanket and maybe some food we are going to eat at dinner, and I felt happy again and warm inside.
As I was buried in that warmness and happiness, she whispered: On your birthday, we are going to go and get presents for ourselves.
You know where it is?
No, I said.
They are in the sky. The dots of light in the sky.
Oh, Mama, you mean the stars. They can be our presents?
Yes, she says, they are there for us to keep, but you have to be a good boy, and you can keep only one.
You can have one, too, Mama.
Thank you.
She says she is thinking about taking one of the two blue stars that are always together, and I know which ones she means because we go look outside our balcony at the stars and sometimes on weekends at the beach, where you can see them better.
I know she is hoping I will take the other blue star.
I don’t know why I know but I know. Maybe the same way I knew the right answer was French Fries.
It would be nice to be the two blue stars in the sky, always together _ Mama and me.
They aren’t really blue, they are kind of white, maybe dim and blending into the midnight blue-black of the sky, more blue than the other ones that look yellow or pink or really, really white.
I don’t know why, but, when I speak, I say something different.
Mama, I want the red big one, you know, the one that hangs low in the sky, like it’s waiting for something to happen, so quiet and almost evil, or watching what is evil so it is filled with making everything good.
Mama doesn’t stop at all this time.
Oh, that is a good choice, she says without a blink of hesitation.
I will be those two blue stars on the other side of the sky, like eyes, always watching you from afar.

The Crooked Smile _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

The Crooked Smile
_ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

You smiled
Suddenly
In the silence after your first breath of a wail
So still and serious,
Testing the corner muscles of your mouth
Forgetting for a moment your instinct to suckle
Looking with your miracle almond eyes into my eyes,
Hello
Hello
Hello
Pleased to meet you.
A tiny crooked
But perfect
Smile.
They say:
Newborns don’t smile for weeks.
I decide
you are just a genius.

No Tears _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

No Tears
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

Victims of abuse
do not weep or scream, even whimper.
Too scared to speak out.
Tears are seeking sniffles of sympathy.
Pleas are assuming cuddles of resolution.
Being born into abuse is darkness with no escape. So we stay silent.
“Mama, mama.
I’m sorry, mama,”
is not
something we say.
We drink in all those words
Like the salty tears we do not taste.
Just wait in fear.
Filled with hatred and the blind groping for justice and
the secret tongue-biting vow of revenge.
But we do not ask for pity.
We do not cry.

A Facebook Post Upon Reading a Facebook Post

A Facebook Post Upon Reading a Facebook Post
_ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

I saw your post about not wanting children.
I do feel bad.
But more than that
I feel I understand exactly how you feel as that is how I felt all through my 20s, actually until I had you.
Then I knew or I think I knew that having you was the most wonderful thing that had happened in my life.
I just feel bad you feel the wa
y you do _ not only because we were “bad” parents and didn’t give you a bright happy childhood full with Elmo smiles _ but more because I was exactly that kind of person, like you, who didn’t want children at all.
The world is such a horrible place and what child would want to come into such a horrible place?
And if parents are all imperfectly human, then how could any parent live up to the task?
I am exploring these ideas and more in the writing that I am doing now and always have _ since you were born.
Maybe that is selfish because a child is real with real needs, not like writing which is more unreal than real.
But I am convinced more than ever that you are the best thing that happened in my life.
And it is not anything that you will do or you will become or you will say or feel.
Nothing can change this simple fact.
It is beyond any explanation or any argument or any question.
It is so very unreal.
And real.
Like Music.
And so maybe someday you will have that magic of a child.
Somewhere inside of you from where your music is born a child is waiting to be born _ to you.

No Gift of the Magi

No Gift of the Magi
A Poem by Yuri Kageyama

we were poor
not dirt poor but poor
me a reporter at the local rag
you a stay-at-home dad and part-time English teacher
and so when i opened that velveteen box
you handed me oh so casually on
Christmas eve
palpitating
anticipation about a
gem or jewel or sparkle
that other girls get
and saw a plain black fountain
pen
the kind no one uses anymore
mont blanc or some other brand requiring finger-smudging
ink,
i was angry
“why did you buy this and
waste money?”
and then you
suddenly
moved
and i thought you were going to hit me
and you took the pen
and broke it in half
hot with something
that was beyond
the anger i felt
sour-tasting disappointment
a feeling of not being
loved
not like that O. Henry story
where the comb unwanted, the watch band unwanted
were simple
priceless proofs of
true love
undeniable,
not that dumb purchase filled with
hate,
and you looked up
and said what I didn’t
think of and what you didn’t
want to say
at all,
“I bought you a pen
because you are
a writer
and that’s what writers use
_ a pen.”

Japanophile Part 2 A Story by Yuri Kageyama

The toys piled up, evidence being submitted to prove an absent mother’s love.
The colorful trading cards were those warm hugs that were never given, the video-game cassettes in the dozens were those sleepless feverish nights forgotten, and the tiny cars that scuttled across the linoleum threatening to trip adult feet were those lullabies that fell silent. I wanted to prove I loved my toddler son, still too young to understand that I needed those hours away to pay the rent.
“When are you going to quit your job?” he would ask now and then, choosing a quiet moment he knows will get my full attention.
This is a serious question to be contended with. I want to cry. I would quit right now, if I could. But I don’t know how to tell him that.
His legs are starting to break out in hives, and because he scratches at his raw skin with his little clawlike nails, his calves are constantly bleeding.
Once I got a call from the social welfare office, wondering what’s going on. The doctor that I take him to for these allergies, as that’s what it is that is causing this itching, is giving me funny stares.
“My mommy doesn’t come home for a loooooong loooooong time,” I hear my son telling the doctor in his usual high-pitched singsong voice.
I was able to take some time off work the first few years after his birth. I dutifully followed the advice of La Leche League to breast-feed him as long as he wanted, or almost as long as he wanted, which turned out to be two years, after which I had to decide this was it.
He would cuddle next to my breast, sucking although he had grown to be more a little boy than a baby, staring into my eyes with total trust and the glee of possession, sometimes biting my nipple with his teeth or pulling with clamped lips until I had to ask him to stop. His looks said he was proud to have this privilege, especially because he no longer needed the nourishment.
A woman who happened to walk by remarked, “Oh, you are not working? So he doesn’t know the reality that is waiting for him; does he?”
I clearly remember the I-know-it-all expression of superiority on her face as though she had appointed herself a shaman fortune-teller, as do all those working women who went before me.
At least, they get to do that _ tell others what’s coming.
Even after my son started school, he didn’t really have a mother. I found out his friends were asking him: “Do you have a mother?”
It was a cruel, brutally straightforward question that children have a way of coming up with, but it was a valid question.
If others had moms picking them up and making nice lunches, and he didn’t, where was this mother?
Where was I for this child? Did this make me really a mother? Did I just want a child so I could have a child but without doing the job of being a mother?
I had to wipe the thought out of my mind when I was working. I had to forget.
Forgetting, you’d think, is something that happens naturally, what you thought you had tucked away in memory, some fold in your gray matter, slipping away. Oh, I forgot. But this was a different kind of forgetting.
It took a lot of concentration. But I was able to forget. If I did not forget, I would have lost my mind.
But I did forget.
But was this child able to forget?
Or did he have to fight the gnawing loneliness with all his might, fighting back tears and telling himself: “My mommy doesn’t come home for a loooooong loooooong time,” over and over?
It makes me afraid.
I cannot imagine such loneliness. To be a child and not have a mother. To be that tiny dot in the sky like a star all by itself in the universe and not know what is up or down, or if and when this horror will ever end.
To know not only that you are alone but that you are alone in this loneliness, that every other boy and girl had a mommy, that soft warm cuddly woman who came to pick kids up and made nicely decorated lunches.
How could a little mind forget? Even with all the colorful cards, games and tiny cars, reminding you that I do love you, how could he ever forget?
In his high school, there was one day hot lunch was not served, some strange practice to encourage parent-child bonding. My son didn’t even tell me.
I happened to see him jump into a convenience store to buy his lunch. That’s how I found out.
I felt a hot gush of guilt and sorrow as though it was enveloping me from the top of my head, the strange feeling I felt when I watched my father eat or my sister cry over nothing, when I was growing up.
I still have not figured out what this emotion meant. It tasted sour, like tiny pieces of glass, inside my mouth.

Japanophile _ Part 1 A Story by Yuri Kageyama

I woke up this morning with the certainty that I had just given birth.
The sensation was unforgettable, a soreness, more like a heaviness, at the pit of my lower stomach below my navel, that could remember a brutal tugging, tearing away at my insides, leaving me raw and bleeding. I could feel that warm wetness at my vagina, making my skin chilly as I sensed the liquid spread and clung to the sheets.
Having a truck run over you must leave you with this same feeling, but it would require a super-thin truck crunching over only your lower stomach.
I closed my eyes tight and shuddered, tucking my chin below the cream-colored flannel sheets, maybe trying to forget the pain, maybe trying to fall back asleep again, sinking into my burning-red dream again, as that was what it must have been _ a dream of giving birth? Or was it?
Did I just have yet another abortion? Or did I really give birth and since I am alone in my bed, was the baby whisked away, stolen from me before I could even see him, or was it her, claim the baby as my own?
But I must have given birth, really.
Why else would I be bleeding? Why else was there this throbbing that remembered with a certainty that was physical, like a slap, that someone was there, inside of me, before I awoke, maybe an hour ago, maybe a few minutes ago.
Surely, the baby had been there inside my uterus, which probably was snatched away with the baby, all while I was asleep, leaving me with this emptiness, this groaning pain.
For months, I had known this baby. I had grown accustomed to its presence, and I know it was a big-headed bulgy-eyed fish bobbing inside me, sometimes sucking on its thumb, sometimes chuckling, sometimes even asking what kind of life awaited when it was born.
He was already an individual, confident of his goals, his identity, that conviction he was there growing inside of me for a purpose, that he belonged there.
And so I was not that surprised he had left so soon.
But I missed him. I did not intend to claim him as my baby the way ordinary mothers would, as something dependent and therefore weaker in status.
He had been a guest from the start, proudly using my uterus, and promising to stay and be my child only if he felt like it and I fit his needs.
Even then, we had been so close for 10 months, or rather, because he had been inside me, a part of me. He took the food I ate to use as nutrients to grow from fish or worm to half-man inside my uterus.
So at that point at the umblical cord serving as a pipe so the baby could get nutrition to grow, never mind my uterus had gone missing, we were connected, and that was supposed to be eternal, long after the baby was born.
We were one, together, the same.
If I jumped from a loud sound, a door slamming, the crash of lightning, a harsh yell, he would jump, too, first inside of me before he was born, and now somewhere, wherever he was. If I drank a lot of chamomile tea, the baby would sneeze like I would sneeze. If I had chocolate cake, he would murmur, “Yummmy,” and feel his blood sugar level perk.
That was how close we were, inseparable, one, together and the same.
I knew what kind of look he would have when he jumped, sneezed or said, “Yummy,” even before he was born.
He had those impish eyes, that proud puckered mouth, that mischevous smile.
I own you, Mom. You will serve me forever, and you will learn so much from being my mother, he would be saying through that umblical cord like a playful toy-telephone connection inside my belly that I could easily decipher in my head, the same way dolphins communicate with each other in the ocean, bouncing sonic waves like ripples of aminiotic fluid.
We’ll have great times together, if you play this game right and I decide I like you, he was saying, even though from his tone, I could tell he was joking.
You will take one look at me, when I am born, and our eyes will meet _ my pale gray tiny eyes and yours, amazed and delighted and relieved the birth is finally over _ in a perfect magical moment.
And you will know I am the one, the one who had been with you all these months, he said. You will recognize me, instantly, of course.
And I will own you _ my mother.
I started to resent how the baby was not with me in the bed, as he should have been, when he was born, maybe not this time in my dream, and surely not that other time when the fetus was aborted, but you know that time, that real time, that time when he had been born.
No, it wasn’t resentment at all.
It was a soothing acceptance of knowing how I had given birth, maybe the same birth over and over, no matter how many times the baby went missing, or the baby got aborted, or even when I woke up to see he had been stolen from me in my dreams.
I knew I had given birth again.