Sadakichi Iinuma · Aizu
Original
すぎし世は
Person
A Byakkotai youth who attempted suicide on Iimoriyama and became the sole survivor of the group. Sadakichi Iinuma carries the weight of having lived after the moment when he meant to die. As the sole Byakkotai survivor, the world of his youth becomes neither dream nor reality. The white cloud image leaves him suspended between the dead and the new age he had to keep living in.
Translation
Was the world that passed a dream, or was it real? I feel as though I am floating like a white cloud in the sky.
Poetic Shape Tanka compresses feeling into five short movements, traditionally heard as a 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm. Its force is in the turn from image to emotion, and in what the poem leaves unsaid.
Reading
A poem that gives distance to the time lived by the sole survivor of the Byakkotai. Calling the past neither dream nor reality is more than nostalgia. For a boy who expected to die on Iimoriyama but continued living afterward, the past becomes unreachable, like a white cloud floating in the sky.
Background
Known as a poem by Byakkotai member Sadakichi Iinuma. When the youths died by suicide on Iimoriyama, he was saved and survived into the modern era. This is therefore not a death poem, but the aftermath of survival. Its drifting between dream and reality carries the weight of having lived on.
Source / Transmission Wording, headnotes, and transmission may differ by source; this page treats the text as one circulated form.
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