Miyazawa Kenji : selections / edited and with an introduction by Hiroaki Sato.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miyazawa, Kenji, 1896-1933.

Contributor:

Sato, Hiroaki, 1942-

Series:

Poets for the millennium ; 5.

Poets for the millennium ; 5

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections. English. 2007

Language:

English

Japanese

Subjects (All):

Miyazawa, Kenji, 1896-1933--Translations into English.

Miyazawa, Kenji.

Miyazawa, Kenji, 1896-1933--Criticism and interpretation.

Miyazawa, Kenji, 1896-1933.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xxi, 248 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2007]

Summary:

The poet Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) was an early twentieth-century Japanese modernist, who is today known worldwide for his poems and stories as well as for his devotion to Buddhism. This volume collects a wide range of Miyazawa's poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession, and his writing was largely unknown until after his death. Since then his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. Miyazawa Kenji: Selections 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. Sato's remarkable introduction considers the poet's significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places the Japanese poetry of the first decades of the twentieth century in a global context. The book features a foreword by the poet Geoffrey O'Brien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O'Brien.

Contents:

Foreword: A Modernist in the Mountains / Geoffrey O'Brien XIII

Poems

from Spring & Asura (First Collection)

Proem 63

Refractive Index 65

The Snow on Saddle Mountain 66

Thief 66

The Thief 67

Love & Fever 67

Spring & Asura 68

Daybreak 70

Sunlight and Withered Grass 70

Cloud Semaphore 71

A Break 71

Rest 72

Annelid Dancer / Annelida Tanzerin 73

Report 75

The Landscape Inspector 76

Haratai Sword-Dancing Troupe 77

A Mountain Patrolman 79

Traveler 79

Bamboo & Oak 80

Masaniello 80

The Morning of the Last Farewell 82

Pine Needles 84

Pine Needles 86

Voiceless Grief 87

White Birds 88

Okhotsk Elegy 90

Volcano Bay: A Nocturne 95

Commandment on No Greed 97

Love in Religious Mode 98

Past Desire 100

Single-Tree Field 101

Ice Fog in Iihatov 102

Winter & Galaxy Station 103

from Spring & Asura (Second Collection)

The Moon on the Water and the Wound 105

Trying to drink from the spring 106

Smallpox 107

Rest 107

The Weather Bureau 108

The Crow 109

The Sea-Eroded Tableland 110

Mountain Fire 110

From under a poplar 111

Reservoir Note 112

Spring 114

The railroad and the national highway 115

The Tsugaru Strait 117

The Horse 118

Cow 118

The Bull 119

Transition of a Bird 120

Mr. Pamirs the Scholar Takes a Walk 121

If I pass through this forest 123

Spring 125

Spring: Variation 125

Wind & Cedar 126

Cloud 127

When the wind comes 128

Harvesting the Earless Millet 128

Wet in soggy cold rain 130

Night dew and wind mingle desolately 131

Good Devil Praying for Absolution 131

Excursion Permit 133

Zen Dialogue 134

Fantasy during a Journey 136

Wind & Resentments 137

Shadow from the Future 137

Love-Hate for Poetry 138

Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a National Park 139

An Opinion Concerning a Proposed National Park Site 141

Drought & Zazen 144

The Iwate Light Railway: July (Jazz) 145

Residence 147

A Valediction 148

The National Highway 150

from Spring & Asura (Third Collection)

Spring 151

Somehow I walk up 151

The Snake Dance 152

Field 153

The corn baking in the blue smoke 154

Banquet 154

Distant Labor 155

Distant Work 156

Cabbage Patch 157

Hospital 158

Flowers & Birds: November 158

Crows in a Hundred Postures 159

The buckets climb 160

Cultivation 161

Sapporo City 162

Ambiguous Argument about a Spring Cloud 162

Pig 163

Malice 164

Now burnt-out eyes ache 164

In Doshin-cho toward daybreak 165

The Unruly Horse 166

The Politicians 167

Politicians 168

Devil's Words: 4 169

We lived together 169

The Prefectural Engineer's Statement Regarding Clouds 170

At the very end of the blue sky 173

Raving 173

Colleagues 174

A Rice-Growing Episode 174

Flood 177

The Master of the Field 178

The Breeze Comes Filling the Valley 180

What a coward I am 183

No matter what he does, it's too late 184

Impressions of an Exhibition of Floating-World Paintings 185

In the leaden moonlight 189

The Third Art 190

The Landowner 191

Hateful Kuma Eats His Lunch 193

Since the doctor is still young 194

Night 195

A few more times 195

A horse 198

A Young Land Cultivation Department Technician's Recitative on Irises 199

The man I parted from, below 200

from During Illness & Other Poems

Koreans Pass, Drumming 203

Pneumonia 203

Ah that 204

Talking with Your Eyes 205

Past noon it's three o'clock 206

When that terrifying black cloud 206

Thump thump thump thump thump 207

Desperately trying to sleep to sleep 208

Wind is calling me out in front 209

My chest now 209

When I Open my eyes an April wind 210

Night 210

While Ill 211

And it must be that I will die soon 212

(February 1929) 213

October 20th 214

(October) 28 216

Untitled 217

November 3rd 218

Two Tanka 221

On Miyazawa Kenji

Four Images / Tanikawa Shuntaro 225

We Are All Excellent Musical Instruments / Yoshimasu Gozo 229

Miyazawa Kenji / Michael O'Brien 235.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-246).

Translated from the Japanese.

ISBN:

9780520244702

0520244702

9780520247796

0520247795

OCLC:

70839796

Online:

Publisher description