Kenji Miyazawa: An Asura in Spring
translated by Ruriko Suzuki, with introductions by David Chandler. The first half of this book consists of the English translations and notes. The second half consists of the poems in Japanese and is taken from the Japanese text edited by Taijirou Amazawa. ISBN 4-88198-909-X, 1999, 250pp, hardcover, 147x210mm.
Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) was born in Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, today a fashionable resort area but then a small, snowy, remote town. Kenji was the eldest child of a wealthy landowner and pawnbroker. Precociously gifted, he had a brilliant school career. His stories are now valued as imaginative fantasies in which animals, plants and even stones have human emotions. His greater achievement is in poetry and he has a uniquely original place in Japanese literature. At fifteen he was already writing competently in the traditional 31-syllable Waka form, but his distinctive genius only revealed itself when he turned to free verse forms under the influence of Japanese translations of English Romantic poetry.
In a famous letter of 1925 to his friend Saichi Mori, Kenji denied that his free verse should be considered poetry at all. Rather, Kenji suggested. his "poems" are descriptions of the workings of the conscious and unconscious mind; he hoped they might be of use to psychologists. Thus, the present translation has been made as literal as possible. The translator has attempted to follow the Japanese line for line.
The landscapes that Kenji describes are constantly sliding between what might be loosely considered objective and subjective spheres of reference. At first this can be disorientating, but after one has read a few of the longer poems one quickly adjusts to this distinctive manner, then starts to enjoy it.
Comment
Kenji Miyazawa is ranked as one of the three leading modern Japanese poets. Strangely, his work is little available in English. This book makes a great contribution by making much of Kenji's best work available in excellent English translation, with added explanation and introduction by David Chandler, and the original Japanese poetry.
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