The Ariake Collection

“The Physiognomer of Wisdom Looked at Me” is the title of the first of the eight sonnets that open Ariake-shū, and the book goes on as it starts: densely, strangely, with the images of a poet steeped in French and English symbolist verse. Published in January 1908 by Kanbara Ariake (1876–1952), it is the best-known collection of one of the two great symbolist poets of Meiji Japan.

Its more than fifty poems run from the eight sonnets of “Leopard's Blood” through Epitaphs and the seasonal pieces to the long ballad “The Mermaid's Sea,” seventy stanzas in 7-5 metre. Among them are Kanbara's versions of Rossetti, of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát and of Blake's “The Fly,” which show how a Japanese symbolist listened to English poetry.

The complete collection in a new translation from the Japanese, with a translator's note and 90 endnotes that give readings, allusions and the sources of the translated poems. The English keeps the images exact and the syntax as close to Kanbara's as it can.