“Your Own Sensitivity, At Least”: Remembering the Postwar Poet Ibaragi Noriko, an Appreciation and Four Translations

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the death of the postwar poet Ibaragi Noriko (1926-2006). She was prepared: three months earlier, at age 79, she had written out a farewell letter and had it printed, ready to send to some two hundred of her friends and correspondents. Leaving blanks for the date (February 17, 2006, though it was two days later when she was found in her bed) and cause of her death (a brain hemorrhage), she expressed her wishes that there be no funeral or memorial and that no flowers be sent to her now vacant suburban home. Instead she made one request: “If you will pause for a moment, just a moment, and say to yourself ‘So now she is gone…, ‘that will be enough.”