Naomi Hirahara

Serve the shogun with single-minded devotion. 

     —Aizu samurai code of conduct

Kintaro Ikeda was alone in this world, but that was not always the case. In Aizu-Wakamatsu, he had brothers, his parents, grandparents, and many aunts and uncles. And then the Boshin War came.

Practically all were dead now or rotting in the hinderlands of Aomori, the northern part of Honshu. John Henry Schnell, the Prussian who had provided the warriors of Aizu-Wakamatsu with rifles and guns, had been arrested by the Meiji imperial army but was eventually released because he was a gaijin, a foreigner. When Schnell announced that ...

Nozomi chased her black cat through the fields of Wakamatsu Colony in Gold Hill. She still was not allowed to bring the cat inside of their home. “Kitanai,” her mother said, pushing Neko-chan out with the ends of a straw broom.

Even though Nozomi was only seven, she was given a list of chores to do on the colony. Wash and clean dishes from meals. Help her mother with the laundry. Change the linens on the beds regularly and keep her eye out for bedbugs and cockroaches.

Other than babies, there were no other children in Wakamatsu. Nozomi’s skin ...

Shinshi-san went into her second bedroom, the one filled with mulberry leaves, and checked on the status of her silkworms. Hundreds of white skinny caterpillars, thinner than her pinkie finger, had devoured thick layers of leaves that she had laid out last night. It amazed her that these creatures could eat so much, literally many times more than their actual weight. Some of the leaves were totally bare, only their thin veins remaining.

How could she keep her babies alive until they could reach the stage where they would spin their silk cocoons? She knew that it was ridiculous ...

Jou Schnell looked out her window of her small four-room, wood-framed house on Gold Hill. Through the walnut trees, dappled light streamed onto the dew-covered grass, a common sight during the last days of summer in California.

Her nursemaid, Okei, was late. She was just a child herself. Only about seventeen. Jou remembered when she herself was seventeen, seven years ago, when the Tokugawa shogunate still held power over her childhood home in Japan. The magnificent Tsuruga Castle in Wakamatsu was still standing in its full magnificence at the time, a beacon for all samurai still loyal to the shogunate ...

This month we are treated to two highly-lauded, accomplished writers and community heroes – Naomi Hirahara and Stan Yogi. Their pieces step out of each writer’s usual practice and into the poetry featured here (and we will surely feature more of their poetry in the future!). When I read through each of the poems we feature for this October issue of Nikkei Uncovered, I swear I can hear whispers of ghosts...a swirl of voices yearning to break free and be present in the place of visibility and homage.  If nothing else, the writer is witness – and the poetry here ...