Kenji Miyazawa

One night, alone on a hilltop, a young boy is swept aboard a magical train bound for the Milky Way. A classic in Japan, this tender fable is a book of great wisdom, offering insight into the afterlife. One of Japan's greatest storytellers, Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) was a teacher, author, poet, and scientist.

Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is now widely viewed as Japan's greatest poet of the 20th century. Little known in his lifetime, he died at 37 from tuberculosis, but has since become a much loved children's author whose magical tales have been translated into many languages, adapted for the stage and turned into films and animations. Recognition for his poetry came much later. "Strong in the Rain" - the title-poem of this selection - is now arguably the most memorised and quoted modern poem in Japan. Both intensely lyrical and permeated with a sophisticated scientific understanding of the universe, Kenji Miyazawa's poems testify to his deep love of humanity and nature. From a young age, he was fascinated by plants, insects, and especially minerals, which he collected. At school, his interest in nature deepened, and he began poring through books on philosophy and Buddhism, which were to strongly influence his later writing. Miyazawa drew on nature in a way that no modern Japanese author had before him. Where other writers tended to use it as a springboard for their own meditations, he saw himself not just as nature's faithful chronicler and recorder but as its medium: light, wind and rain are processed through him before being recreated on the page. His mode of active engagement with nature set him apart from virtually all other Japanese poets, and led to his work being largely ignored by the Bundan (the literary establishment) and misunderstood for half a century. But in the 1990s, he received unprecedented attention in the Japanese media. The compassion, empathy and closeness to nature expressed in Kenji Miyazawa's poems and tales appealed strongly to a new generation of readers.

The poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) was an early twentieth-century Japanese modernist who today is known worldwide for his poetry and stories as well as his devotion to Buddhism. "Miyazawa Kenji: Selections" collects a wide range of his poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession and largely unknown as a poet until after his death. Since then, his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. This volume includes poems translated by Gary Snyder, who was the first to translate a substantial body of Miyazawa's work into English. Hiroaki Sato's own superb translations, many never before published, demonstrate his deep familiarity with Miyazawa's poetry. His remarkable introduction considers the poet's significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places developments in Japanese poetry into a global context during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition, the book features a Foreword by the poet Geoffrey O'Brien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O'Brien.