Zen Fool Ryokan [Paperback]

Ryokan (Author), Misao Kodama (Translator), Hikosaku Yanagishima (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2000

This book is a collection of more than 150 poems by the beloved poet and Zen monk Ryokan, born in Echigo, Niigata Prefecture in 1757. His poems, which remain widely popular in Japan today, are celebrations of the quotidian, capturing the joys and sadness of daily life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Misao Kodama taught English at a middle school in Kyoto, where she currently resides.

Hikosaku Yanagishima was a professor at Kyoto Seika Junior College and Baika Women’s College of Osaka

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing (February 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804821283
• ISBN-13: 978-0804821285
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,505,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly heart warming!, December 17, 1999

By 

George Itoh (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zen Fool Ryokan (Paperback)

Of all the translated books of Ryokan, this was the most true and heartfully interpreted collections of poems I have come across. As a bilingual second generation Japanese, I know the difficulty of translating the essence of a culture into another, and still relay the message as it was intended. That is the art form of the translator, and very rarely do I feel the same sensation from reading the same material in a different language. Truly wonderful!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, multilingual translation, June 24, 2000

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zen Fool Ryokan (Paperback)

The title of this book is a bit misleading - this is not poetry of the "holy fool" type as one sees the holy fool in the Christian and Islamic traditions. Rather, this is poetry of a Zen monk who retained the playfulness of a child and who is reticent regarding his enlightenment. In fact, you may read far into the book before encountering poems that are unambiguously "Zen".

What truly sets this edition apart, however, is the afterward which includes memories of individuals who knew Ryokan. Even if the translation was mediocre, I would recommend the book for this alone. Luckily, the translation is satisfactory though not inspired.

The poems themselves were written in Japanese and Chinese - in form, they are varied - as there is so much wonderful Zen haiku translated into English, this volume is a delightful counterpoint of other poetic forms.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Same Ol' Quirky Zen Poet in a Quirky Little Collection, July 18, 2006

By 

Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zen Fool Ryokan (Paperback)

Well, there are a good number of books out now on the poetry of this gentle, eccentric, and talented Zen monk, each with their own particular strengths and weaknesses. So what about this one? First of all, this was clearly a labor of love; the authors have been moved and inspired deeply by Ryokan's art and life, and they hope to share what Ryokan has meant to them with English speakers--this aim informs the book with a warmth and immediacy consonant with Ryokan's own writings. On a more technical note, this book is rare in giving Ryokan's poems in Japanese script AND romanji transcription as well as in English translation--this is highly useful for those who may be somewhat conversant with the Japanese language and/or Literary Chinese but not fluent in the poetic idiom of Ryokan's time. I tend to think bilingual editions are a good idea anyway, especially for poetry, and that goes for this book definitely.

I also liked the presentation of the poems in this book. One section just gives the poems one after the other like usual poetry anthologies, and this is fine and well, but other sections were more creative: one imbedded Ryokan's poems in a biography and general intro, one culled the translator's favorites, and one (particularly interesting to me in giving a glimpse of the social role of poetry in monastic life) demonstrated Ryokan in an extended poetic dialogue with his friend and disciple the nun Teishin. The poems themselves are deceptively simple like so much of Ryokan's work, filled with meditations on nature and his eremitic lifestyle with its little pleasures, frequently rephrasing Buddhist insights in an unpretentious and colloquial voice.

The book does have its drawbacks, too, of course. Duly acknowledging the fact that translating from one's primary language into a second language is highly challenging (especially for poetry, in which so much depends upon rhythm, mood, connotation, and such), still that doesn't change the fact that the resulting translations here are somewhat flat and sometimes awkward. And accounting for "poetic license" in translating, still in a few poems the English seems to veer too far off from the original, or else over-interpret it. Finally, in the first pages there is some disturbing culturally-essentialist talk about how Ryokan reveals "The Japanese Mind" as if the Japanese were homogenous and imbued with one collective cultural identity. I don't think Ryokan would go for this. He'd be the first to admit he's a bit of an oddball (rather than a typical example of a given nationality, say). He seems more interested in revealing his own mind, and this mind of his speaks eloquently through his poetry to all of us with ears to hear, no matter where we may be.

Of course without translation that voice won't carry far, and Kodama and Yanagishima are to be heartily thanked for doing their very best to share their enthusiasm for Ryokan with us. In my case at least, the enthusiasm was decidedly contagious.