On August 24, 2023, thanks to your support, we were able to successfully hold the event "It is night in every region of the world" to celebrate the publication of the book "NO JAIL CAN CONFINE YOUR POEM". It was a wonderful success.
Thank you very much to everyone who attended and participated in the event!
During the event, I reported to Somaia Ramish in Holland, sending photos of the event as it was happening.
At the beginning of the event, a video of Yuri Miki's reading was shown to the audience, followed by a video of Somaia Ramish. The video of Somaia Ramish's reading in Holland and a message from Somaia Ramish filmed for this event were shown.
Nozomu Shibata gave an opening speech and explained about our book "NO JAIL CAN CONFINE YOUR POEM".
The first part of the talk will be given by Akira Okawada (literary critic and poet), NIJO Cenka and Jun Kigure (poets), Masahiko Taniguchi (photographer who provided the cover photo), and Akane Hino (manga artist who illustrated Somaia Ramish). Akane Hino, the cartoonist who drew the illustration of Somaia Ramish,
Finally, we welcomed a special guest, Juichi Noguchi, editor-in-chief of Web Afghanistan, who gave a valuable talk.
The second part was a poetry reading.
Motoyamasaki Mifuyu, a well-known poetic reciter, expressed her solidarity with us through her video. We screened her video.
Next, Akira Okawada, NIJO Cenka, and Jun Kigure read from their works in this book.
Mokuhachi Tanaka's haiku and SAGAWA AKI's poetry were read by Shibata, accompanied by RAVVast player SAYO.
Finally, SAYO played a moving song called "Ikiru" on the RAVVast.
We hope that your voices and sounds will reach Somaia Ramish in the Netherlands and the people of the world through the Machinaka Bunka Hut, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Many reporters from various media attended the event.
The book "NO JAIL CAN CONFINE YOUR POEM" was sold at Kodomofukido near the venue!
The after-party was held at the Japanese tea tavern WHIZ.
Again, we all had an irreplaceable and wonderful time.
We talked about Afghanistan.
We talked about poetry and hope.
We would like to thank all of you for your generous cooperation in making this event possible.
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Opening Remarks (Nozomu Shibata)
Hello everyone. My name is Nozomu Shibata, and I am the Japan liaison for BaamDaad (House of Poets in Exile). Thank you very much for your cooperation today. Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy weekday schedule to join us here today. Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of the Machinaka Bunka Hut.
We would like to start "It is night in every region of the world" to commemorate the publication of "No Poetry Cage" on August 15.
The first video is by Yuri Miki, the representative of KOTOBASlamJapan, who recently released a wonderful album titled "SLAM ME," a reading by Yuri Miki of her piece "The Night is Already Dawning.
The next video is a message from Somaia Ramish for today. In a message of gratitude to all of us, to the suffering of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, to the destruction of art, to the banning of poetry, to the tragic situation, to be forgotten by the international community, and to resist censorship and oppression where freedom is not respected, "No Cage for Poetry" with 57 works was published and will be published in France in November, and in the United States in November, and in Japan in November. The book will be published in France in November.
The power of poetry captures the heart. The book is a message against violence and for the liberation of humanity.
And, "No man is free until all men are free." We were treated to a video of Mr. Somaiah reading his poem.
In February of this year, I received an e-mail from Mr. Noguchi, the editor-in-chief of Web Afghanistan, and learned about Somaia Ramish, who had defected from Afghanistan to the Netherlands.
I also contacted the Japan-Afghanistan Society to confirm that the interim Taliban government had issued a ban on poetry on January 15, and that there were protests in the area. They replied that this was true.
Somaia Ramish's appeal to send poems to poets around the world was not met with any action by poets' associations or groups, so as an individual activity, I initially consulted and approached various people.
Akira Okawada and KOTOBASlamJapan listened to me and helped me.
The original plan was to post the poems on the BaamDaad website on April 15, but there were so many great ones that we decided to publish them in France, and the poet Cécile Oumhani will be editing the book. The Japanese poems were translated into French by Atsushi Takahashi.
The relationship of trust between Somaia Ramish and us in Japan continued, as videos of Yuri Miki and Shibata reading were shown in the Netherlands during that period, and Somaia Ramish's work was published in our poetry magazine "Fragile" with translations by Jun Kigure.
In June, I received an e-mail from Somaia Ramish saying that she wanted to publish in Japan and that this was a volunteer effort. We had only two months to do it. Since a normal publication would cost about 1 million yen, I took on the task of publishing the book in an on-demand format to solve the time and money problem.
When I was having trouble with editing, Yumiko Aoki was the first to correct the manuscript by e-mail, and Akira Okawada, Jun Kigure, and NIJO Cenka have helped me so many times that I managed to get it to publication level.
I could not have completed the book without all of you, some of whom have supported me anonymously. 35 poets and translator Atsushi Ando also helped me, and I managed to publish the book after much editing and no sleep, with relentless redrafting of the manuscript.
The book was ranked No. 1 on Amazon's New Poetry Book Rankings, and at its best, it rose to No. 5 on the best-selling list. This is a nationwide ranking in Japan, and is comparable to best-selling books published by major publishers. Thank you very much. All proceeds from this book will be donated to BaamDaad.
It has been reported in the Persian BBC, The Independent, and in the Hokkaido and Nagasaki newspapers.
This is the first time I have had such an in-depth exchange with an overseas poet.
Among Japanese poets, GozoYoshimasu and AKI SAGAWA are doing great international work as poets, but they seem to be above the clouds to me.
But since the year before last I have been involved in KOTOBA Slam Japan, a competition that connects me to the world. I believe it has helped me to become interested, aware, and act on the message of Somaia Ramish, a poet from abroad.
Arthur Binard, a member of the selection committee for the Hideo Oguma Award, critiques the award based on the criteria of "world literature. I was able to learn such an important perspective.
And the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan. The U.S. military has not withdrawn from Japan. The U.S. military has been in Japan ever since after World War II to the present. Japan is one of the U.S. military bases. There are more than 200 US bases and military facilities in Japan. I believe that we in Japan in such a state are not unaffected by the problems in Afghanistan.
As Eriko Tsugawa talked about in her lecture in May, there was a time when Japan also could not write poetry freely until recently.
Japan also has a history of depriving indigenous people of their rights and oppressing their values through invasions.
I feel that the situation between Japan and Afghanistan is not a stranger to each other, and in fact, all factors are closely intertwined in a very complex structure.
Recently, sexual crimes, victimization, secondary damage, and discrimination have been discussed in Japan, but the situation in Afghanistan, where women are deprived of their rights, treated like cattle, and new prisons for women are being built, is a criminal human rights issue.
The closure of beauty salons in Afghanistan has been reported worldwide, Beth Gibbons of Portishead has performed with Afghan girls, and the issue is gradually gaining attention.
I hope that many people in Japan will take an interest in this issue.
And as for the imaginative power of literature, Afghanistan is really in such a miserable situation that it is hard to imagine in peaceful Japan.
For example, what if I had been born in a Taliban family, raised from an early age to believe in the values of my parents, and lived as a Taliban?
What would I have to do to change my way of life?
Such imagination makes me think that this is the potential of literature to reach the essence of the problem.
In director Tatsuya Mori's film on the Fukuda Village incident, the villagers who carried out the slaughter were ordinary people. The film also deals with the theme from the viewpoint of how ordinary people can do such cruel things.
The work of poetry and literature reaches a different perspective from the point of view of the time when the problem occurred, listening to the deepest voice of the human soul, letting the roots of imagination crawl richly to the background of values and actions on both sides of the wall, and to the deepest region of it.
While there is a wonderful aspect to the creation of poetry, which is to write about and criticize the state of society, there is also a mysterious aspect that, by descending into the inner, internal world that seemingly has nothing to do with it, one can engage with society in the opposite direction, which is not just politicalism in the narrow sense or that intellectuals should also participate in society and be responsible, but also that the writer should be able to I believe that there is a possibility for writers to delve into their own uniqueness and universally approach the whole, which is what Jean-Paul Sartre describes as "engagement", and in this way it can be effective in confronting human problems.
I believe that we must write something that can reach such a level when we are involved in poetry and literature, and that is what I have learned from this project and from all of you.
August 24, 2023 Nozomu Shibata (President of the poetry magazine "Fragile")
