2023 Fujisan Tanka Contest

Foreign Language Tanka Excellence Award

On 1 January 2024, winners were announced for the 2023 Fujisan Tanka Contest, in which I was awarded a Foreign Language Tanka Excellence Award. I wrote the winning poem on 16 July 2023, inspired not just by Mt. Rainier but by often seeing Mt. Fuji from Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan. Although I was not able to attend, a special award ceremony announcing this and other prize winners was held at Meiji Kinenkan (Constitution Hall) in Tokyo, Japan on 4 February 2024. The poem, its translation, and commentary by Aya Yuhki appeared in International Tanka #15, 2024, pages 1 and 3.

for a moment

from the train window

Mt. Rainier in snow

as if that could solve

all the world’s problems

わずかの間汽車の窓から見える雪のレーニア山―世界の全ての問題を解決してくれるよう

shaso kara isshun mieru yuki no rēniasan—sekai no subete no mondai wo kaiketsu shitekureru youdatta

場所 第八回富士山大賞 2023

「優秀作」

Commentary by Aya Yuhki (結城 文)

The meaning of this tanka seems to me interpreted as follows: “No sooner had I seen the snow-covered figure of Mt. Rainier standing isolated as it passed by the running car’s window than it seemed to me as if it might solve all the problems in the whole world.”

I’ve heard that Mt. Rainier used to be called “Takoma-Fuji” among immigrants from Japan before World War II. In the later 1960s, I used to live in San Francisco, as a family member of a businessman in a Japanese company. In the times of vacations, we sometimes drove up to Vancouver. I remember getting a glimpse of Mt. Rainier through the window of our running car.

This tanka makes me feel the sense of responsibilities to the world that people in the United States of America unconsciously embrace within themselves.

Rainie 山はアメリカ合衆国の西海岸ワシントン州にある独立峰で、第二次大戦以前の日本からの移民 の人達に 「タコマ富士」 と呼ばれ、親しまれていたという。 1960 年代の後半私がサンフランシスコに 駐在員の家族として在住していた頃、ヴァケイションでカナダのヴァンクーバーなどに行く途中ハイウエイ を疾走する車窓から、 その山容を遠望したことを懐かしく思い出す。

この歌は、アメリカ合衆国の国民が無意識的に自ら抱いている世界に対する一種の責任感のようなものを感じさせる歌だと思った。