Difference between ひらがな and 漢字 in this poetry


A friend of mine shared this poetry to me, and just for fun I decided to
translate it in my first language, Italian. The author is 穂村 弘 Homura Hiroshi,
a contemporary writer.

> あした世界が終わる日に
>
> あした世界が終わる日に  
>  一緒に過ごす人がいない  
>  あした世界が終わる日が  
>  夏ならいちごのかき氷  
>  舌をまっかに染めながら  
>  輝く雲を見ていたい
>
> あした世界が終わる日に  
>  一緒に過ごす人がいない  
>  あした世界が終わる日が  
>  冬ならメリーゴーラウンド  
>  つやつや光る馬たちの  
>  首を抱えて廻りたい
>
> あした世界が終わる日に  
>  一緒に過ごす人がいない  
>  あした世界が終わる日が  
>  今日なら蝶のアロハシャツ  
>  汗ばむような陽炎の  
>  駅であなたと出逢いたい

As you notice, the poetry is very simple, with no difficult or hard words, but
one thing stands out: tomorrow is written in hiragana and not in kanji. After
some thinking, I thought of these two main reasons:

  1. 明日 has actually two readings, あす and あした, and the reader with the kanji had to choose one or another, but in hiragana this problem does not occur (also it may be that あす is a more formal/polite word(?), and perhaps it contrasted too much with the plain of the poetry)

  2. hiragana is a "Japanese thing", so it may convey different and more deep meanings in the Japanese view, while the kanji may be more "rational" or "mental" kind of things (and on this I recall a book of Natsume Soseki, こころ).

What do you think about this? How do you feel when you read a word in hiragana
vs in kanji? Is what I thought right or totally wrong?




"Tomorrow" is seldom written as あした in daily usage. It may be that the writer
would like emphasize the word "tomorrow" as the main subject of this poem, and
write it in a "special" way on purpose in order to catch people's attention to
the word - However, no one but the writer can tell you his real intention.

In daily usage, sometimes the words that are usually written in kanji are
written in hiragana so that Japanese children and foreigners who know limited
Japanese can read it as well. For example, in the emergency announcement on
NHK TV news when the tsunami comes, instead of writing "津波！逃げて", they write
"つなみ！にげて！".

In addition, different train companies may used kanji and hiragana to
differentiate the stations that have the same name. For example, in Sapporo,
the names of the subway station and the JR station are both "Sapporo". The
subway writes the station name in hiragana さっぽろ, while JR writes it in kanji
札幌.




I wouldn’t have stopped to think why あした is written in hiragana. I might have
if 今日 were written as きょう. I guess I’m simply more used to seeing あした than
きょう.

We would have to ask the author why he chose あした over 明日, but one possible
reason, other than those you listed, is that he might have thought the kanji
sequence of 明日世界 would affect readability.

