War Verse

To cheer up the soldiers, hundreds of geishas, storytellers, wrestlers, chorus girls, magicians, actors and prostitutes have traveled the long weary miles from Japan to the China front during the past 18 months. The same route has been crossed by other hundreds of newspaper men, photographers, lecturers, poets, painters, cartoonists, novelists, composers and lyric writers, for few campaigns in history have ever been so painstakingly reported to a home population as Japan's war in China.

For the home folks, the most popular reportage is done by the poets. No Japanese newspaper is complete without its sprinkling of wartime poetry. No battle is too insignificant, no soldier's deed too small to be unworthy of recording in the stylized, form-bound Japanese lyrics. Under this stimulus, the soldiers themselves have turned to writing poetry, and a favorite Japanese magazine stunt is to hold contests for soldier-poets.

Japanese war poems are naturally written in the stilted, mock-heroic style of the Japanese classical tradition. No hints of hardship, weariness, homesickness creep in.

In one Japanese magazine recently appeared this thought:

The Rising Sun
Already 'tis waved by good Chinese hands.

Prize-winning poem in a patriotic literature contest held by Kodan Kurabu, popular Tokyo monthly, was written by a naval flier:

High on our glittering silver wings,
We carry the flag of the Rising Sun,
And wherever we may soar,
No sign of enemy planes we see.

A touch of surprising realism was contributed by a Sergeant Saito, composing his verse in an Army hospital:

Gun in hand, my strength pushed me forward,
But now may I only slowly touch the body
Whose pain keeps it chained to my bed.

Biggest poetic outpouring of Japan is the annual Imperial poetry contest, the winners of which were announced last week by the Poetry Bureau of the Imperial Household. Any Japanese subject may submit a poem of 31 syllables (called a tanka) on a given subject. This year's subject: ''The Morning Sun Shines on the Island." Normally about 17,000 subjects of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito submit a tanka, but the wartime verse boom more than doubled the usual number of contestants. This year's contestants numbered 40,523.

Of the five winners, two were soldiers, one a captain, the other a private. But the most important poem was the one composed by His Imperial Majesty and read at the annual Imperial Poem Reading:

Seen from exalted heights,

Beautiful is the first vision

Of islands in the morning sun.

Other contributors were Her Imperial Majesty Empress Nagako and Her Imperial Majesty Sadako, the Empress Dowager. Last year the Emperor created a sensation by mentioning "peace" in his poem. This year only the Empress Dowager used the word:

The people of the islands,
Lifting their eyes to the adorning sun,
All await the reign of peace.

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