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INTERVIEW BY
KIDO SHURI WITH L. C. VINHOLES
Note: This interview was given by email to poet Shuri Kido in July 2013 and published in Tokyo in Gendai-shi-techo - Ccontemporary poetry magazine. The present reading of this text must take into account the delay in dates.
Q1: When and how did you meet Kitasono-san first time?
R1: In 1953, I met Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003) at the conference A Trip to Japan that the composer H. J. Koellreutter (1915-2005) delivered at the Free School of Music in São Paulo. Haroldo learned of Kitasono Katsue (1902-1978) through correspondence with Mary Omar Pound (1925- ), daughter of Ezra Pound (1885-1972).
When planning the Brazilian Concrete Poetry Exhibition, in Tokyo, I receive a recommendation from Haroldo to contact Kitasono. My first meeting with Kitasono was at the Fugetsudo - a coffee shop in the Shinjuku District, a meeting point for poets, musicians and artists -, during the screening of a film he produced. Since then, we have built our relationship and, on many occasions, I received hagaki – postcards -, inviting me to the meetings of the VOU group, which I always attended. It should be noted that I have always been interested in Kitasono's work, which, in the years 1963/64, led me to translate the anthology Kemuri no chokusen - Straight lines of smoke.
Q2: How did you connect Kitatono-san to overseas? (How do you connect him to concrete poetry and visual poetry?)
R2: Regarding Kitasono Katsue's contacts abroad I will limit myself to dealing with those who, in forty years, were, little by little, consolidating through the exchange of correspondence and publications and with the dissemination in the printing and exhibition of poetry in Brazil and Japan.
Haroldo de Campos, one of the leaders of the Noigandres group, cradle of Brazilian concrete poetry, heard about Kitasono through correspondence with the daughter of poet Ezra Pound.
The events and facts that I remember in which I was involved or witnessed are the ones I list below, accepting collaboration to expand or correct them:
September 1957 - Haroldo sends the first letter to Kitasono. In this letter, of which I have a copy, it is written:
“concrete or ideogramic poetry, as we name it, aims to create an object of its own: a verbal-object; it is aware of graphic field the ´verbivoco-visual´ virtualities of its medium, the word, disconnected of any subjective or decorative effect. The formal patterns of verse (´vers libre´ included) is left aside: an artisanal reminiscence. The contents, Shortness. Clarity. Straight forwardness. ´Kanji´fication of poem´s perception: it appeals not only to verbal, but to nonverbal level of communication as well”.
November 1957 - The first letter from Haroldo is answered by Kitasono with the sending of the magazine VOU Nº 58, with the text in Portuguese of the poetry Tanchona kukan - Monotonous space -, that would arouse the interest of emerging concretist poets in Brazil and Germany.
May 1958 - Kitasono's poetry Tanchona kukan - Monotonous space -, translated into Portuguese by Haroldo de Campos and into Japanese with the help of the teacher José Sant´Anna do Carmo, was published in the essay Poesia Concreta in Japan: Kitsono Katsue, by the Literary Supplement of newspaper O Estado de São Paulo.
September 1958 - The Portuguese version of Tanchona kukan, by Haroldo, was published by VOU magazine Nº 63. This version accompanied by the english text, also by Haroldo, served as the basis for the German version by Eugen Gomringer published in Kleine Anthologie Konkreter Poesie of the German magazine Spirale Nº 8.
February 1959 - Kitasono publishes 200 copies of his tenth anthology Kemuri no chokusen = Straight lines of smoke, with twelve poems, including the 1957 poetry Tanchona kukan - Monotonous space -, through Kokubunsha Publishing House.
1960 - In the first three months of 1960, I had the opportunity to comment with Kitasono on the project for the exhibition with works by Brazilian poets. I remember the great surrealist's easy acceptance of writing the text requested for use in the opening of the exhibition. It wasn't long before I had in hand what Kitasono had signed at the Fugetsu-do, a favorite haunt of poets and artists from the VOU group, which on April 16, 1960, side by side with the Pilot Plan of Concrete Poetry, would be exhibited at the entrance to the aforementioned event.
April 1960 - On the occasion of the inauguration of the Brazilian Concrete Poetry Exhibition, at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, Kitasono gave a succinct but timely speech, transcribed in the Anthology of Brazilian Concrete Poetry booklet, published by the monthly magazine Design Nº 27 (December 1961).
July 1960 - According to the manuscript, a text signed by Kitasono entitled Brazilian Concrete Poetry, translated by the Japanese language teacher Sant´Anna do Carmo, was published on the Invenção page of the Correio Paulistano newspaper (July 31,1960) together with his poetry Menino na greenhouse, translated by Haroldo, based on the English text from the publication Japanese Literature, by Donald Keene, on the same page of the news about the Exhibition of Concrete Brazilian Poetry at the Tokyo Museum of Art (April 1960).
September 1963 - In my Portuguese translation, the poems of Kitasono Shijin no Hako - Poet's box -, (VOU Nº 88) and Shiroi no sochi - White device -, from the anthology Kemuri no chokusen = Straight lines of smoke, were exhibited at the Second National Week of Vanguarda Poetry, at the University of Minas Gerais State, in Belo Horizonte, organized by the poets Affonso Ávila (1928-2012) and Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna (1937- ). This exhibition also featured poems by Akito Otsu (1920- ) and Fukiko Kobayashi (1937- ).
June 1964 - With one of his poems, Kitasono participates in the International Concrete Poetry Exhibition, at the Sogetsu Kaikan theater auditorium, alongside with works by 28 poets from 5 countries, on which occasion the home edition of Kemuri no chokusen, in the original and translated by me into Portuguese, was distributed to the public and read by poet Kyoko Torizawa and myself.
July 1964 - Based on the French text of the magazine Le Lettres Nº 31 (VII/IX.63), directed by the poet Pierre Garnier (1928-2014) and his wife Ilse Garnier (1927-2020), Kitasono translates into Japanese the Brazilian Concrete Poetry Pilot Plan (1957) and published it in the magazine VOU Nº 95.
December 1965 - In the Literature/Dialogue column of the newspaper O Estado, from Fortaleza, State of Ceará, poet and filmmaker Eusélio Oliveira (1933-1991) reports having received a copy of the magazine VOU Nº 95 and comments on the translation of Kemuri no chokusen, into Portuguese.
1967 - Haroldo's English version of Tanchona kukan, was included in An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, edited by Emmett Williams.
July 1977 - On the eve of leaving Tokyo for Canada, I went to the Library of the Faculty of Dentistry to say goodbye to Kitasono - not only the admirable poet, but also the friend I gained in Japan. I reiterate my thanks for his appreciation for the work of Brazilian poets and, from him, I received the 1973 anthology Shiroi no hahen - White shards -, with the dedication:
“à monsieur Vinholes, en hommage sympatique. Kitasono Katsue le 28 juillet 1977”.
In Kitasono's words, Haroldo was remembered as “our mutual friend” and when we left, on his own initiative, we went to the terrace of the building where his assistent, poet Setsuko Tsuji, took the picture of our historic handshake, historical because no other photo of Kitasono shaking hands is known.
January 1983 - The prestigious magazine Atravez, from Editora Martins Fontes of São Paulo, reproduces the bilingual text of the homemade edition (1964) of Kemuri no chokusen, as well as the list of anthologies of Kitasono from the period 1929 to 1954 and the poet's succinct chronology.
The events and facts in which I was involved or witnessed are the ones I list below, accepting collaboration to expand or correct them:
ABOUT NIIKUNI-SAN
Q3: When and how did you meet Niikuni-san first time?
R3: In 1963, Fujitomi Yasuo came to the Brazilian Embassy and it was he who first told me about Seiichi Niikuni, commenting on the ZERO-ON anthology, published in September of that year. Days later Fujitomi returned to the embassy and was accompanied by Seiichi Niikuni, a poet from Sendai who had recently arrived in Tokyo, bringing his collection with him, of which he presented me with the copy that would have been very useful to me when I decided to translate his poems.
On this day, the three of us had a long and fruitful conversation about the new language in visual and sound poetry and about the relationship between poetry and the peculiarity of different types of plastic art and the plural language of musical expressions. I mentioned the concrete poetry movement in São Paulo by the brothers Haroldo (1929-2003) and Augusto de Campos (1931- ) and Décio Pignatari (1927-2012). I explained how and why, in April 1960, I organized the Brasilian Concrete Poetry Exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. I also brought them up to date on the project to organize an international exhibition of concrete poetry, including works by Japanese poets. We met countless times until we decided to collaborate with each other for the exhibition on July 1964 at Sogetsu Kaikan the headquarters of the newest Japanese school of ikebana created by Sofu Teshigahara in 1927 -, with the participation of 28 poets from 5 countries with support from the Brazilian Embassy and the Goethe Institute of Tokyo. Japan was represented by poets Kitasono Katsue, Fujitomi Yasuo, Shimizu Toshihiko Niikuni Seiichi and Akiyoshi Miyagishi. It is known that after this exhibition Niikuni created the Association for the Study of Art (ASA) of which I was a member along with Kamimura Hiro, Kagiya Yukinobu, Fujitomi Yasuo, Shimizu Toshihiko, Mukai Shutaro. Niikuni also created the homonymous magazines that did much for the dissemination of concrete-visual thinking and the ideas of poetry from the second half of the 20th century. I feel it was a privilege to have been invited two times to Niikuni's house in Yukigaya, Ohtaku, in Tokyo and know his work room. I would like to point out that in 1966, in partnership with Niikuni's wife, the plastic artist Niikuni Kiyo, we created the object-poem Spiral, first exhibited at the Crystal Gallery (1967) in Tokyo and, more than fifty years later, at the exhibition of Leopoldo Gotuzzo Art Museum, in Pelotas, State of Rio Grande do Sul (2018).
Q4: How did you connect Niikuni-san to overseas? (How do you connect him to concrete poetry and visual poetry?)
R4: In 1963, the magazine Le Lettres Nº 32, published the International Poetry Manifesto of the French poet Pierre Garnier. This manifesto was signed by poets from 14 countries including Japan, with Kitasono Katsue, Shimizu Toshihiko and myself. On that occasion by letter I introduced Niikuni and sent some of his poems. Garnier chose and published the poem transmission 9 in Le Lettres Nº 33, October/December 1964. Since then, the two poets got along, began to work and produce unique poems in French/Japanese, which, plagiarizing an expression of the world of pianists, I came to call them “poems by four hands”. Such poems began to occupy the pages of the magazines they published in Paris and Tokyo.
In one of the first pages of the Pierre anthology, Ilse Garnier - Seiichi Niikuni (2016), an exceptional work by Marianne Simon Oikawa emeritus professor of French language at the University of Tokyo addressing the history and work of these poets, is transcribed the statement by Garnier which says:
“The présence of Seiichi fut un des grande événements de ma vie”.
I feel happy and gratified by what Pierre Garnier said and I am especially proud to have been the nakodo - matchmaker -, between these two great poets. Niikuni was the one I talked to most about music and not just poetry. He has always proved to be well-informed about trends in new music produced in the second half of the 20th century. He was interested in knowing the reasons why I had abandoned Schoenberg's twelve-tons theory and created my own “time-space” theory, presented at three conferences in São Paulo (Setember 1956). He asked questions about the ideas that resulted in my Instruction 61 for any four instruments (Design magazine Nº 37, 1962), to create random music, presented by the first in the premiere (December 12,1961) by Nova Music Group Tomohisa Nakajima, from Tokyo. Finally, it is worth noting that the poem Mizumi o - The lake -, from the ZERO-ON anthology, in a Spanish version based on my Portuguese translation, was published in Argentina, in the magazine Cormorán and Delfín Nº 3 (October/1966) edited by the “poet and captain of a merchant ship” Ariel Canzani, being the first publication of a poem by Niikuni in the three Americas.
ABOUT NOIGANDRES
Q5: Please tell me the stories and memories about the time when Noigandres was established.
R5: The NOIGANDRES group and magazine were created in 1952 by Décio Pignatari and the brothers Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, to serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of their ideas and works, thus starting the movement of concrete poetry, which, later on, were affiliated with Ronaldo Azeredo (1937-2006) and José Lino Grünewald (1931-2000). As is well known, noigandres is a word that appears in one of the poems of the troubadour Arnaut Daniel (12th century), quoted in Canto XX by Ezra Pound. Noigandres magazine had five issues, the last in 1962.
Q6: Please tell me about your memories about Campos brothers.
R6: In the years I lived in São Paulo from 1952 to 1957, I rarely met the poets Augusto and Haroldo de Campos. But since the end of 1959 I have exchanged letters with Haroldo countless times, who, for me, became the herald of the group. The few times I was in São Paulo after the ten years I was in Japan and move to Canada, I always visited Haroldo and Carmen, his wife and photographer, and we would go out to talk over a pizza at the restaurant in the Pinheiro neighborhood, where they lived. It was there that, on one of the occasions, I met the Peruvian writer and novelist Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (1936). The last meetings with Haroldo took place in Milan and Venice, in 1996. In Milan we visited the argentine poet Tomas Maldonado (1922-2018) and, in Venice, we met Nanni Belestrini (1935-2019), organizer of the Festival of the Word of the International Contemporary Poetry Festival (June 1997), in which we participated with Umberto Eco (1932-2016), with whom I had the pleasure of sharing the festival's opening night, on the 6th of that month.
Q7: Please tell me about your position in Noigandres.
R7: Although I left Brazil in July 1957 and had the friendship of poets and concrete painters, I only came to know Noigandres magazine after I arrived in Japan and started planning an exhibition of Brazilian concrete poetry. For me, the magazines Noigandres and Invenção - also edited by the concrete poetry group -, were important sources of information and study.
ABOUT YOU
Q8: I'd like to know about relationship or link between your concrete poetry and your music.
Q8: The distances that separate poetry and music as languages ​​seem to be large, but, in reality, they are very close to each other because, somehow, they are the result of those who, at the same time, are busy using them and recording the gift. When I left Brazil and went to Japan (1957) I took with me a baggage of contestation. After assimilating the music techniques and language of the past and learning that of dodecaphonism, the language of twelve tones created by Arnold Schoenberg, I had presented at three public conferences at the Free School of Music in São Paulo, the Tempo-Space theory, where silence, the pauses, were used not as an absence of sounds, but as a structural element of the work created. The theoretical part presented by me was demonstrated on two small pieces that I had produced as an example of the feasibility of applying this new way of composing music. For me, the European historical dualism still present in the language of the twelve tones was overcome and the values ​​of silence/pause with those of tones, as compositional material, were equated.
In the field of poetry, I left southern Brazil and arrived in São Paulo with a classical heritage in poetic language, but with the intention of leaving what I had done in the past and looking for a new way of using the word as indispensable material and explore the free space of the page's paper, leaving behind the rules of grammar and syntax. A modest example of this attempt was the mini poem, from April 7, 1957, which I dedicated to my mother Joaquina.
só
sim
sem
tu
tu
só
sem
mim
(só = only, sim = yes, sem = wihthout, tu = you, mim = me)
My stay in São Paulo, a little over four years, allowed me to experience the artistic-cultural swarm that moved there new leaders and new paths in music, theater, dance, plastic arts, architecture, cinema, literature in general and poetry in particular. There I met Haroldo and Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari, future great collaborators of what I would do in Japan.
Q9: What Japanese food do you like?
R9: In the first ten years that I lived in Japan, little by little I experimented with all kinds of the rich and varied Japanese cuisine. I frequented restaurants from north to south, from east to west. I never forgot the sazai - species of mollusc -, tasted in Enoshima and, when I came back from Kansai on winter days, the tasty nodle - kind of pasta -, from the small station in Kumagaya, served in a chawan – kind of tea bowl -, with exquisite craftsmanship. The gastronomic experience in Japan changed my eating habits, causing me to abandon fried foods and prefer a healthier diet, without salt and fat.
Q10: In Japan, where did you go often? Please tell me your memorial place in Japan.
R10: At the turn of the 1950s/1960s, Brazil and Japan worked together to build two large steel plants: one in Ipatinga, in the state of Minas Gerais, and the other in Tobata, in a large landfilled sea area, in Kyushu. To handle this big deal, the Tokyo Purchasing Commission (CCT) was created. In 1959, he started working on this commission. The members of this commission traveled from north to south of Japan to meet engineers from more than 40 large Japanese firms involved in the production of the two blast furnaces, rolling mills, machines and other equipment for the new steel plants. On weekdays, when traveling, my obligation was to work for CCT, but on Saturdays and Sundays, I had free time. It was during these days that I sought out the poets and plastic artists residing in the cities I visited and gave them the presentation cards signed by my friends in Tokyo, poets and plastic artists. That's how I created a large network of contacts in the cities of Osaka, Kobe, Hakata, Nara, Kanasawa, Toyama, Niigata, Sakata, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Toyonaka, etc. This network of contacts has always been very useful and still gives me a lot of joy.
I know you often visit Kamakura!
Q10-1: Places, Scenery
R10-1: There are so many unforgettable landscape scenes in Japan that it would take a lot of time and a lot of paper to quote and describe each one of them. But I will choose just three: the landscapes on the shores of Lake Ashi, near Mount Fuji, and the beaches of the Sea of ​​Japan coast on the Noto Peninsula, where the cities of Suzu and Wajima are located.
I climbed only once to the top of Mount Fuji and from there I observed the exuberance of the landscape of mountains, villages, valleys, rice fields, orchards, thermal waters, etc. For Shirahama beach, on Lake Ashi (1963) I created the Garden of Words using words with the same sound, but in Japanese and Portuguese with opposite meanings: ai - love / cry of pain -; ningen, reading ninguém -; “nobody”, human being, person / no person /; nada - "nothing", open sea, ocean, source of everything (for the fisherman/traveler, / nothing, nothing; and the SOL – sun -, monument with 12 repetitions of the letters of this word which, placed concentrically in a circle having one l as the central axis, take shape of the “sun clock”. These two poems are also my first attempts at interference in the traditional western urban environment.
Since 1962 I have often been to the Noto Peninsula where, in Wajima, they produce beautiful pieces of lacquer and I have intensified contacts with the inhabitants of Suzu, the sister city of Pelotas, my homeland, the first sister cities between Brazil and Japan. In 1963, at the Shogakko - Primary School -, in the Ohtani District of Suzu, excited girls and boys sang the anthem I composed for them with lyrics by the great poet Iwamoto Shuzo (1908-1978). As an eternal memory, there was, in indelible stone inscription, the record of my feeling towards the population of that neighborhood:
å‹äººã‚ˆ Yujin yo Friends!
ã‚‚ã—夢を見れã¯" moshi yume wo mireba if I dream
夢ã«å¤§è°·ã‚’見る ume ni Ohtani wo miru dream of Ohtani
エル.ã‚·ï¼ ãƒ“ãƒ‹ãƒ¨ï¼ãƒ¬ã‚¹ L. C .Vinholes
1962.10.06
Invited by Isumiya Masuhiro, Mayor of Suzu, in September 2013, I participated in the program that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the bonds of friendship between Suzu and Pelotas. In 1962, I dedicated the poem Suzu no hanataba - Suzu bouquet -, o the city of Suzu.
Q10-2: Temples and shrines.
R10-2: In Nara - Japan's first capital -, I frequently visited Todaiji - largest buddhist temple -, and Kasuga Jinjya - one of the three largest Shinto shrines in Japan. At Todaiji I made friends with the young monk Washio, stayed overnight at his house where I met his wife and learned a lot from their pleasant conversation. Once, while in the company of friends from the embassy, ​​I had the electrifying experience of passing through the open hole in one of the main columns of the monumental structure of that temple. At Kasuga Jinjya I had a great friend, Kanichi Kasagi, a gagaku musician who allowed me to show my skill and together with him play the sho - mouth organ -, during a ceremony with the participation of the young miko who perform kagura - the sacred dances in Shinto shirines.
When I was still a ryugakusei - scholarship student -, and living in Jyugaoka, I often went to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, enjoy the peace and tranquility of the Kotokuin forest that does not exist today, to read, study and think sitting on one of the round stones that served as the base for the columns destroyed by the tidal wave. I became friends with the owner of the souvenir shop and her collaborators. One of them, Yoshie Igarashi, I met again in 2013, when, with my wife Helena Maria and my nephews Luiza Helena and Luís Eduardo, we visited the Great Buddha. It was also always a pleasure to take Brazilian tourists to visit the Shintoist temple Tsurugaoka Hachiman Jingu, with its huge staircase and the famous gingko tree stem trunk, where the shogun Sanetomo was assassinated. Writer, philosopher and art critic Mario Pedrosa, then president of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) was one of my companions on one of the visits to Kamakura.
Q10-3: Restaurants, bars, coffee shops.
R10-3: There were many restaurants that I frequented in Tokyo and in other cities from north to south of Japan, but unfortunately, I don't remember the names. I haven't forgotten Shinjuku's Fugetsudo Galery where I met many poet friends, watched film screenings and listened to good Western classical music, accompanied by a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of blackforest cake. Also in Shinjuku, I frequented the Moku-ba caffeeshop, where, among others, I met Emi Hatano, a professional creative dance scholar, student at Kunibuyokenkyujyo - Kuni Masami Studio -, where I lived my first months in Tokyo; and clarinetist Sadao Watanabe, who became interested in bossa nova, visited Rio de Janeiro and played with Brazilian musicians.
Q10-4: Book shops.
R10: Whenever I had any savings, I would visit the second-hand bookstores in Kanda and Roppongi, where I acquired dozens of books about Japan in Japanese, English and French, which helped me a lot for my studies related to gagaku - traditional music of the Japanese court -, including the complete collection about different subjects. In Roppongi I also met the Masao Hara, oner of na antique from whom I learned a lot about imari, kutani, nabeshima pottery and also about ukiyo-e. In September 2013, as a gesture of gratitude to someone who was a great friend, I visited for the last time the antique shop that gave me the opportunity to purchase a large part of what I donated in 2011 and 2012 to the Leopoldo Gotuzzo Art Museum in Pelotas, belonging to the Federal University of Pelotas.
Q10-5: Museums
R10-5: I didn't miss the opportunity to visit museums from north to south and learn a lot from the immense variety of what they presented, covering all periods of the history of Japanese culture. But my greatest interest was in what was presented by the galleries, even the smallest and most modest. It was there that I found contemporary production and that of young Japanese people, it was there that I found out which aesthetic trends most interested them. It was Japan from the 1950s to the 1960s that also interested me a lot.
Q10-6: People.
R10-6: I've met so many people that it's impossible to make a choice. But so as not to disappoint, I'm going to quote someone whose name I don't remember, but I haven't forgotten. His residence and workshop were a few meters from the entrance to the temple of the Great Buddha of Kamakura. It was just a door that gave access to the interior of the house. Sitting on a pillow, he made kokeshi - wooden dolls -, and beautiful chochin - paper lanterns -, that he painted and colored himself. He was very curious, asked a lot of questions, showed that he had culture and was interested in different subjects. He often offered me a chawan of Japanese tea served by his wife. With her for the first time I experienced the taste of mugicha – a type of here made with wheat. She confided that, for a long time, she wore a vest to minimize the pain she felt in her back. On the last trip to Japan, in September 2013, I went looking for my friend-craftsman, but not even the neighbors had news to share.
ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS IN JAPAN (VOU MEMBERS)
Q11: Your memories about Yasuo Fujitomi-san.
R11: In 1963 Fujitomi Yasuo sought me out at the Brazilian embassy interested in obtaining the Brazilian legislation relating to soccer referees, a request that was later answered by the Brazilian Federation of Referees. He was a football referee, but everyone knows of his proficiency in the English language, having successfully tackled the difficult job of translating the poems of Ezra Pound and e. e. cummings. His biographies of Kitasono and Eric Satie are also known and appreciated. For a long time, before and after the First International Concrete Poetry Exhibition (1964) at the Sogetsu Kaikan, Fujitomi and I had been looking for a rapprochement between Kitasono and Niikuni, taking into account the importance of their ideas and achievements for Japanese poetry in the latter mid-twentieth century. But our efforts and our strategies never had the result we expected. We always took into account the hypothesis that our intention was not fulfilled, as we recognized that Kitasono had a well-established name and history, and Niikuni a path that started out strong and that has always been promising. Following Fujitomi's trajectory for more than half a century, I allow myself to register that I always had the impression that Fujitomi was a poet and intellectual of his own ideas who never allowed himself to belong to a certain group of poets. He respected everyone, with everyone he had the best relations, but always with independence.
Fujitomi's interest in Brazilian concrete poetry and its role in the emergence of concrete poetry in Japan were recognized by him. In a letter dated April 15, 2001, before traveling to Colombia to give a lecture at the XI Medellin International Poetry Festival (01 to 10/06/2001) on the theme The concreter poetry and the Visual Poetry in Japan, he wrote:
“ The organization of this festival, ask me to give a lecture about Japanese concrete poetry” ... “I must talk about you who introduced the concrete poetry to Japan and should like to explain by projecting the slides” … “If you were there in Medellin , I'd have been happy”.
I record that my last encounter with this great poet and friend was in September 2013, at his residence in the Midorigaoka Hills, in Tokyo. That day, along with so many memories, Fujitomi said that he could not resign himself to not having been able to visit Brazil and, jokingly, not to visit Maracanã.
Q12: Your memories about Shohachiro Takahashi-san.
R12: I met Shohachiro Takahashi (1937-2014), but our relationships were not intense as they were with other poets of his generation. These are things in life that we have no control over. I felt deeply the news of his passing in May 2014, when Japan lost one of its most distinguished poets, author of a surrealist tendency, but also of traditional tanka and haiku. I remember that in the mid-1970s, during my second stay in Tokyo, Takahashi's poetry, covering a wide range of themes, gained significant acceptance.
Q13: Your memories about Toshihiko Shimizu-san.
R13: Shimizu Toshihiko was one of the most present partners I had in Japan, always wearing his elegant and inseparable beret. We met at the Fugetsu-do cafe and when, in 1963, they created the newsletter with the monthly schedule, Shimuzu signed the introductory text commenting on my poem de . a . published in the February newsletter. With him and Kitasono, we signed the “International Position” manifesto presented by Pierre Garnier and published in the magazine Le Lettre nº 32 (April/June 1963). Like Niikuni and Fujitomi, he was one of the great collaborators in the organization and dissemination of the 1st International Concrete Poetry Exhibition (1964) held at Sogetsu Kaikan. Two of his pioneering poetic works using Scotch tape and entitled Moji kaiga - caracter/letter-picture -, caught the public's attention and were published in the ASA magazine nº 1, of the Association for the Study of Art of which it was founding member. He is the author of the pertinent essay Language and Contemporary Art published in ASA Nº7 (1974). With a new “letter-picture” he participated in the exhibition of painting and poetry of the International Society of Audio Visual Plastic Arts (ISPAA), together with one poet from Germany, Scotland and Switzerland, three from Japan and fourteen from Brazil. In a circular letter dated February 25, 1979, he officially announced the dissolution of the VOU group, until then chaired by Kitasono, announced the creation of the Publishing Association group whose project was to finance and publish a collection of articles and essays under the title The World of Kitasono Katsue, and, as a collaboration, requested a message from Haroldo de Campos, the first Brazilian poet to have contact with the late Japanese poet. I too had the great pleasure of preparing a message to the poet-friend Kitasono.
Q14: Your memories about Motoyuki Ito-san.
R14: You don't always do what you would like to do. You don't always have the friends you'd like to have. In this second case I include the relationship I had with the poet Motoyuki Ito. We had rare encounters, but the impression was that we never forgot each other. One of the most beautiful news I have from this friend is what he wrote to my friend Keiko Onoda and that I received from her in a message dated January 8, 2019, which I respectfully transcribe below:
“About Vinholes-san’s exhibition’s information, I thank Keiko so much. When Vinholes-san was in Japan, he kindly, often, sits me invitation letters of Concrete Poetry. But different from Seiichi Niikuni-san and Yasuo Fujitomi-san, who had reacted to the movement, we were crazy about Camera at that time, and I feel very sorry we didn't answer the invitations. I thank Keiko for being able to see the pioneering, great works of Vinholes-san, now again!!!
Q15: Is there someone else to remember?
R15: Yes. I want to remember Habara Shukuro.
Habara Shukuro was a friend who became a key player in the dissemination of Brazilian concrete poetry in Japan. A professional designer and poet dedicated to visual poetry, he did not belong to any group of poets. Much of his poetry is published on postcards, a practical and objective way to reach interested audiences. He consolidated an affinity with Brazilian concrete poetry when, after his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (1960), he took advantage of the prerogative of being one of the influential members of the writing team of the Design magazine and in it, in issue Nº 27 (1961 ), published the mini anthology commemorating that event, with texts and poems, with pagination by the Rio de Janeiro architect Alex Nicolaeff; and, again, in Desing Nº 73 (1965), the article, in Japanese and English, on Novas Palavras, Nova Poesia – New Words, New Poetry -, by Décio Pignatari and Luiz Ângelo Pinto, illustrated with the authors' semiotic poetry. Habara should also be remember by the magazine Graphic Design N° 18 (1965), with three pages dedicated to the Anthology of Brazilian Concrete Poetry. In Typographics magazine "TEE" No. 61 (June 1985) he has published his dense article on concrete poetry and visual poetry.
On the occasion of the round table held on September 27, 2013, orginized by Akiyo Kobayashi director of the Department of Graphic Arts at Musashino University, when, together with Mukai Shutaro, the theme A Concrete Poetry Brazil-Japan was discussed, a large panel, in capricious calligraphy by Habara, exhibited my 1962 poem Suzu no hanataba - Bouquet of Suzu -, giving me the opportunity to comment on the rhyme he has and which is current practice in traditional Brazilian poetry.
I consider as a singular proof of our affinity and friendship the poetry lcビニヨï¼ãƒ¬ã‚¹ = lc viholes (Janary 2,1963) that Habara dedicated to me, creating an image that, exaggeratedly, culminates considering me Biniyoresu wa sekai no hito and Biniyoresu wa Nihon no hito = Vinholes is from the world and Vinholes is from Japan, thoughts of a friend that make me me proud, but I certainly did nothing to deserve it.
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