The collage work of Yuki Tanaka’s Chronicle of Drifting merits concerted study, despite the fact that its length, in page numbers, exceeds no more than 60. Indeed, Tanaka concedes in the acknowledgements section, the book “has been in the making since 2014.”
A first reading (of the initial three sections) evoked a sense of stylistic frustration. William Carlos Williams already did that: sparse, refined, balanced sentences, something in their rhythm that leaves dénouement absent, as though an abrupt, periodic silence could lead one back to question the source of all these images and their pattern (cicada shells, persimmons, homonyms, slice of pear, wedding kimono, night boat, sea shell, etc.), and the author almost too elegantly arranges the space between their appearances — tell me, what does it mean, what do you mean, Yuki? At what point does understatement underplay its role? Williams was a doctor, and Tanaka’s biography: artist, teaches at Hosei University, lives in Tokyo, a student of modernism, time, syntax, English literature. His 2016 dissertation mentions Bergson.
Some of the frustration of the first reading was on account of my desire for releasement of Tanaka’s voice itself, as though its poetic restraint was as much a trace of academic origin as poetic obedience. Not until the fourth section do clauses, conjunctions, counterthoughts appear to emerge —beforehand, the ingredients of a witch at the cauldron, and the reader-student, a silent, almost somnolent witness to the emergent milieu. So, one requires a dose of faith to follow the consciousness who arranges these lines, at least 10 years in the composing. Does the meaning exceed itself? That the title — snipped from Kansuke Yamamoto’s 1949 collage, a greyscale print of a woman’s figure in a white dress, a sloop to replace the figure’s head — does not don the front cover is curious indeed. Instead, Seiji Tōgō’s 1929 Surrealist Stroll was selected.
Chronicle of Drifting is divided into four sections. Speaking of collage, here are the epigraphs of each section, in respective order: “What should I compare this world to” —Sami Mansei (Eighth Century); “In 1904, thirteen geisha girls visited the St. Louis World’s Fair, to be exhibited”; “I thought I was the only one drifting on a night boat” —Unknown; and “You have departed on a long road.” —Sano No Chigami No Otame (Eighth Century). For a typical Western reader, even one in part decked with a master’s degree in English literature, the unfamiliarity of references, names, evokes a world made up, unknown, both past and present, respectable and ambiguous, generated in part by an intelligence of artificial composure (so-called education, social mores, stylistic plagiarisms, repetitions, even the recursive world of endless allusions).
Something in the structure and mode of collage, while serving as homage to the modernism Tanaka studied, also leaves space for a question of who he is, what shadow haunts the recesses, the abrupt pauses between phrases. Is it mystification for its own sake, or has the attendant spirit concocted a special mix of words, images, and phrases to somehow blend the poetic genius of the West, of the Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Saxon tradition, mythos, word bank, with the cicada song and reminder that “The Air Is An Exquisite Boneless Princess” (Shūzō Takiguchi)?
Somehow, Tanaka calls forth a sense of courage mixed with reservation, indication beside silence (again, some sentences so pristine that their very craftiness invites a suspicion that one imposes meaning where there is not necessarily one; but it is not definitively clear whether that is an intentional device of the author or a play of language itself).
Tanaka’s erudition is not to be underestimated. His debut, full-length collection, Chronicle of Drifting, reunites a modernist sensibility with the moment and strives for a vision of humanity, what it means to be human, beyond confessionalism. It is in the fourth section where a coded voice begins to blend with the eruptivity of words themselves, prevailing upon the metricity of semanticism — an intended sequence of movement — and it’s there where some of the poetic voice, its desire, begins to reveal itself. Oh, yeah, let’s not fail to mention: English is not his first language. Can one only wonder at the direction of Tanaka’s future prose and poetry? This is a serious piece of writing. Chronicle of Drifting, of dying, chronicle of awakening.
