“Tomino’s Hell”—A New Symbolist Translation

A dozen years ago, I produced a translation of Saijō Yaso’s 1919 poem “Tomino no Jigoku” (“Tomino’s Hell”), motivated in part by its strange afterlife as a bit of creepypasta—an Internet “cursed poem.” At the time, I aimed to bring clarity and coherence to a text that had often been rendered into English in ways that obscured its imagery and narrative.

Since then, however, I’ve found myself returning to the poem not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a work of symbolist poetics. That shift in perspective has prompted me to attempt a new rendering.

Saijō was not only a poet but a scholar deeply engaged with French literature. He studied in Paris at the Sorbonne and was influenced by writers such as Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Valéry. Their work emphasized suggestion over statement, emotional resonance over narrative clarity, and the use of image and sound to evoke states of mind that resist direct explanation.

Read in that light, “Tomino’s Hell” begins to look very different.

Rather than a straightforward account of a boy punished in Buddhist hell, the poem unfolds as a sequence of disjunctive, recurring images: blood, fire, jewels, lashes, birds, needles, valleys. These elements do not resolve into a stable narrative so much as they accumulate into a kind of emotional landscape, one shaped by guilt, loss, fear, and fixation. The speaker’s perspective is unstable; agency is often unclear; even the apparent “punishment” of Tomino may be less a moral certainty than an obsessive preoccupation.

In other words, the poem behaves much like symbolist verse: it displaces meaning onto image, allowing objects (a caged bird, a leather pouch, a flowering buttercup) to carry emotional weight without fully disclosing their significance.

My earlier translation leaned toward interpretive clarity, smoothing over ambiguities and, at times, making implicit connections explicit. This new version moves in the opposite direction. It seeks to preserve and even heighten the poem’s opacity, its incantatory rhythms, and its dreamlike transitions. Where possible, I have pared down connective tissue, embraced repetition, and allowed images to stand in tension with one another rather than resolving them into a single explanatory frame.

The result is not a more “accurate” translation in any simple sense, but a different one: an attempt to bring the English reader closer to the poem’s symbolist logic, and to the unsettling, echoing space it creates.

As before, I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s safe to read aloud.

Tomino’s Hell

Elder sister spills blood.
Younger sister breathes flame.
Sweet little Tomino
lets fall bright jewels.

Tomino alone
goes falling
into that hell.
No flowers. No light.

Who is it that strikes him?
Is it his sister?
The red tassel of the whip
will not leave his mind.

Strike him. Strike!
Even unstruck,
there is only one road
to the unending hell.

Into the dark
I ask for a guide:
the golden sheep,
the singing bird.

How much has he gathered
into the leather pouch
for that long journey
through the unending hell?

Spring comes
to the valley,
to the wood—
even to the black ravines
of hell’s turning paths.

The bird in its cage.
The sheep in the cart.
And in Tomino’s eyes, tears.

Sing, little bird,
in the damp forest.
He cries out:

“Little sister!
I miss you!”

His voice breaks
with the strain
and all of hell echoes
in answer.

A buttercup opens—
yellow, sudden.

Seven mountains.
Seven valleys.
Sweet little Tomino
walks alone.

If they are there—
bring them to me:
the needles
of that mountain.

Not for nothing
are the red pins driven in:
they mark the way.
They mark him.

Sweet little Tomino.

—translated by David Bowles
March 25, 2026

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Japanese Original with Literal English Translation:

姉は血を吐く、妹は火吐く、
As for the elder sister, [she] spits blood; as for the younger sister, [she] spits fire;

可愛いトミノは宝玉を吐く。
the cute/lovely Tomino spits jewels.

ひとり地獄に落ちゆくトミノ、
Tomino, going/falling alone into hell,

地獄くらやみ花も無き。
hell: darkness, even flowers do not exist.

鞭で叩くはトミノの姉か、
The one who strikes with the whip: is it Tomino’s elder sister?

鞭の朱総が気にかかる。
the whip’s red tassel is a thing that weighs on [his/the] mind.

叩けや叩きやれ叩かずとても、
Strike! Ah, strike him! Even if [you] do not strike,

無間地獄はひとつみち。
Avīci hell is one road [only / a single path].

暗い地獄へ案内をたのむ、
[I/he] request(s) guidance/leading into the dark hell,

金の羊に、鶯に。
to the golden sheep, to the bush warbler.

皮の嚢にやいくらほど入れよ、
Into the leather pouch, how much [shall one] put in?

無間地獄の旅支度。
preparations for the journey to Avīci hell.

春が来て候林に谿に、
Spring comes indeed to the forest, to the valley,

暗い地獄谷七曲り。
dark hell-valley, [with] seven windings/turns.

籠にや鶯、車にや羊、
In a cage, the bush warbler; in a cart, the sheep;

可愛いトミノの眼にや涙。
in the eyes of lovely Tomino—tears.

啼けよ、鶯、林の雨に
Cry/sing, bush warbler, in the rain of the forest

妹恋しと声かぎり。
“I long for my younger sister,” [he cries] to the limit of his voice.

啼けば反響が地獄にひびき、
When [it/he] cries, the echo resounds in hell,

狐牡丹の花がさく。
the buttercup (“kitsunebotan”) flower blooms.

地獄七山七谿めぐる、
Circling/traversing the seven mountains and seven valleys of hell,

可愛いトミノのひとり旅。
the solitary journey of lovely Tomino.

地獄ござらばもて来てたもれ、
If [there] be such a hell, please bring [them] here,

針の御山の留針を。
the fastening pins of Needle Mountain.

赤い留針だてにはささぬ、
The red fastening pins are not stuck in merely for show,

可愛いトミノのめじるしに。
as markers/signs of lovely Tomino.