Miyazawa Kenji: Selections (Poets for the Millennium) (Paperback)

by Kenji Miyazawa (Author), Hiroaki Sato (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
*Starred Review* American Buddhist poet and ecological activist Gary Snyder translated 18 Miyazawa poems for his collection The Back Country (1967). Those 18 and the many more Hiroaki Sato has translated for this book attest a humorous, reverent, Buddhist-agrarian sensibility profoundly congruent with Snyder's. Miyazawa (1896–1933) was a regional business tycoon's well-educated and indulged elder son, who chose to live in voluntary poverty among hardscrabble farmers in his native prefecture in northeast Honshu. He published children's stories and one poetry collection in his lifetime. His work was thoroughly collected even before World War II, during which his most famous poem, "November 3rd," became a patriotic classic memorized by schoolchildren. A silencingly beautiful expression of humble Buddhist devotion, it isn't very typical of him. Early on he wrote modernist nature poetry, in the first person yet so expansively as to suggest pantheism. Later, among the rural poor, his focus sharpened and his personal sympathy burgeoned in poems that intricately describe and lovingly embrace that community. He wrote in free forms throughout his career, though the tanka and haiku undergird his late verse in particular, according to Sato in the absorbing 50-page introduction to the man and his work. Considered a great Japanese modernist poet, he is also, patently, a great world poet. Olson, Ray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (May 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520247795
• ISBN-13: 978-0520247796
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #567,681 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.", April 1, 2008

By	Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Miyazawa Kenji published only a single volume of poetry before his untimely death, so it's perhaps no wonder that one of the most unique poetic voices of the twentieth century went relatively unheard for so long. As with William Blake, posthumous recognition for Miyazawa's work traces the long arc of a slowly gradual process, ongoing in this case. One wherein Sato Hiroaki's rather straightforwardly-titled book here can be seen as a particularly noticeable ripple. Featuring a significant number of poems from Miyazawa's 1924 collection "Spring and Asura" as well as the two following unpublished collections of the same title along with later poems written during the poet's last years of illness (including his deathbed tanka of 1933), this fine volume offers a satisfyingly representative selection of Miyazawa's work complemented with an insightful and helpful introduction and set of critical essays.

Miyazawa's poems, mostly shi in free verse, are wondrously strange. Definitely Modernist, somewhat like a distant poetic cousin of Wallace Stevens in a way. Experimental and yet pleasantly unpretentious, deeply serious with a light touch. Even hilariously sarcastic sometimes, but never cruel or unkind. The unlikeliest and seemingly most unpoetic of vocabularies imaginable come alive with a startling beauty in his poems--baroquely recondite jargon from the natural sciences and ornately abstruse terms from Buddhist philosophy make themselves at home among the mountains and fields and the passing seasons of Japan's far northeast countryside. And few poets are more down to earth and yet alert to the transcendent than Miyazawa.

Sato Hiroaki's translation work here is simply superb. After all, Miyazawa's poems are chock full of just about everything that makes a translator's task almost impossibly formidable, and yet he carefully and accurately reincarnates Miyazawa's poetry in all its wonderful complexity into living, poetically plausible English. And in a few cases one can compare how he pulls it off with the equally fine efforts of Gary Snyder and Ueda Makoto, which is an intriguing bonus. Sato's introduction likewise ably handles Miyazawa's multifaceted nature and soundly discusses and contextualizes his poetics. He is able to touch on the depths of Miyazawa's Nichiren spirituality without lapsing into hagiography and the political ambiguities of his interest in agrarian social reform without being cut and dry; he manages to make Miyazawa's extensive scientific expertise understandable to a humanities type like myself and still clarify what is local, global, and uniquely personal about Miyazawa's poetry with consummate sensitivity, nuance, and plain good literary sense. Three short, rather impressionistic essays by the poets Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O'Brien also add a little something interesting, rounding out the volume nicely. Don't let the plain title of this excellent book fool you. This is a definitive take on Miyazawa Kenji's dizzyingly cosmic vision in all of its surprising contemporary relevance, so catch the wave!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent and affordable collection from a magnificent author, August 31, 2008

By	Kat Black (Sunny San Diego) - See all my reviews

I actually have a previous book containing many of these poems also by Hiroaki Sato as well as this book. That book Spring and Asura from the 70's (and therefore older than I by a significant amount) is a extremely rare book I came across by fate. Unfortunately, I was hesitant to lend it out or recommend it because it is impossible to replace. This solves that problem

In contrast, this is a very affordable priced collection any person could add to their library. To give it more value there is a wonderful piece on the front of the book giving key background information on Kenji that is will do wonders for his first time readers.

If you are interested in more of Kenji's work (especially his stories which are not featured here) I recommend checking out the bilingual section of any Japanese bookstore. He is very popular for English learner's texts. Also the abstract anime biography Spring & Chaos(English edition by Mixx Entertainment, now Tokyopop)is a very enjoyable non-traditional biography.