SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.

TOP

» Internet
» Hey, who wrote this poem? Japanese internet users impressed by poem thought to be written by grade-schooler – only to find out unexpected truth!

Featured

Weird
Studio Ghibli
Jobs

Hey, who wrote this poem? Japanese internet users impressed by poem thought to be written by grade-schooler – only to find out unexpected truth!

Kay Apr 17, 2012
Tweet

A certain poem has been attracting much attention on the internet recently in Japan. From the handwriting, the poem appears to be the work of a child in grade school, and people are saying it’s exceptionally well written for the work of a young child. We have a rough translation of the poem below.

——————————————————————–
The Eraser

It erases mistakes eagerly even though it did not make the mistake/
It erases lies eagerly even though it did not write the lie/
It erases smudges eagerly even though it did not make the smudge/
And each time it erases, it becomes tinier and tinier until the eraser
itself disappers/
Eagerly, eagerly, it erases as if to leave behind instead of itself, only
the things it thinks are right, the things it thinks are true and the
things it thinks are beautiful
——————————————————————–

So, what do you think of the poem? It’s quite profound for a work of a young school child, wouldn’t you say? Well, that’s what many people thought, and the poem has been posted and tweeted many times on the internet in Japan. Some people have analyzed the poem seriously, saying that it’s amazing a young child can empathize with an object such as an eraser to this degree and that it even seems as if the poem is also hinting at a kind of sad reality that exists in society in general. Many Japanese internet users were wondering what child had written such an exceptional work of poetry, since the picture of the handwritten poem posted on numerous websites and tweeter accounts offered no clues as to the identity of the writer.

Well, unfortunately for everyone who was impressed by the poem, the truth is that there is no child genius responsible for the poem. It turns out that a bit of research on the internet will reveal that this poem was written by accomplished poet Michio Mado, who has publisehd numerous collective works of poetry and essays and who also wrote the lyrics to one of the best known children’s song in Japan, Zo-san (“Elephant” in Japanese). The picture was apparently just the work of a child who had copied the poem by hand on paper.

So, I guess this is another case of internet users beware. I laughed out loud myself when I found out the truth about the poem, as I too had been seriously impressed by it. It just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you see on the internet. But we all knew that already, right?

Source: http://t.co/JVIpJQvH (Japanese)