“2. When you hear dirty story wash your ears.

When vou see ugly stuff wash your eves,
When you get bad thoughts wash your mind.
and

_ Keep your feet muddy.

" Michael Becker
Newsroom Editor mbecker@nsnews.com

NANAO Sakaki sits across a lunch table loaded
with sushi, salmon, shrimp dumplings and rice.

_We’re in Deep Cove, where he’s a guest of Trevor Carolan
and family. Sakaki pulls his legs up. Two hands cup behind knees.
Legs compress and out pop farting sounds. The kids beside him
giggle. Attention engaged, he ups the ante with the classic armpit
variation. The glorious flatulent cruption is bold and true. We
laugh and. trade variations. It is a light moment in the sun.
: This remarkable 77-year-old man from Japan has been
described many ways over the course of a finely honed life:
Beatnik, bum, poet, environmental activist, wartime radar opera-
tor, lifelong observer of mountains and rivers, wandering story
_-teller, friend of American poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.
He dismisses labels in delightfully fractured English. | -

Nothing

— Nanao Sakaki

Friday, August 18, 2000 — North Shore News ~ 13

CABARET: 14

SHAKESPEARE: 15
ROSS PENHALL: 18 |
CECIL B. DEMENTED: 19

NEWS photo Cindy Goodman

POET Nanao Sakaki, righi, with Trevor Carolan in Deep Cove. Friend of American poets Allen Ginsberg and

Gary Snyder, Sakaki has been at the forefront of the environmental movement in Japan.

“Why? I couldn’t understand. I never think f'm something.
No. Pm not Zen-Buddhist. I’m no hippy. I’m no beatnik. ’m
not a wandering poet. No meaning. No placard. Nothing is best.
We are born for what? Only a short time we are on this planet. So
just enjoy your life. I think that is the only way — epicurean.”

Some describe Sakaki’s artistry as the contemporary realization
of the Zen tradition of Basho and Ryokan. Jn Nanae or Never:
Nanao Sakaki Walks Earth A, published this year by Blackberry
Books, friends share memories of time spent with Sakaki. We learn
that Sakaki’s father dreamed of becoming a wandering poet like
Basho or Ryokan but didn’t.

‘else iooks, or lasts,

like real cedar siding.
ee ;
Natural Durability foe Me boy.

- resistant t i ‘
resistant to decay & insect damage . hag 8 Woiny  Peainy og

¢ Natural Stability
lies flat & stays straight

@ Hatural Workabili
- lightwieght cedar simplities handling

Natural Beauty
--fich grain & colour finishes beautifully

It fell to the son to wander and create, but first came war and
destruction. ;

Sakaki tells me he was a radar man when he was drafted into
the Japanese navy. He was based in southern Japan. On Aug. 9, -
1945 he detected a B-29 on the radar. -

Three days before, Hiroshima had been bombed. U.S. Air .
Force B-29 bomber Enela Gay dropped a single atomic bomb in
the centre of the city. It immediately killed 70,000 to 80,000 peo-
ple, injured about another 70,000 and destroyed half of the city.

See Poet Page 20 -

rop QuaLirY pRopucrs & azrvics. GUARANTEED.
1335 Draycott Rd., Lynn Valley ~
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_WOODST