Kenji Miyazawa 
Miyazawa Kenji [PDF ebook] 
Selections

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.

Table of Content

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword: A Modernist in the Mountains

Geoffrey O’Brien

Introduction

A Note on the Translations


POEMS

From Spring & Asura (First Collection)

Proem

Refractive Index

The Snow on Saddle Mountain

Thief

The Thief

Love & Fever

Spring & Asura

Daybreak

Sunlight and Withered Grass

Cloud Semaphore

A Break

Rest

Annelid Dancer (Annelida Tänzerin)

Report

The Landscape Inspector

Haratai Sword-Dancing Troupe

A Mountain Patrolman

Traveler

Bamboo & Oak

Masaniello

The Morning of the Last Farewell

Pine Needles

Pine Needles

Voiceless Grief

White Birds

Okhotsk Elegy

Volcano Bay: A Nocturne

Commandment on No Greed

Love in Religious Mode

Past Desire

Single-Tree Field

Ice Fog in Iihatov

Winter & Galaxy Station

From Spring & Asura (Second Collection)

The Moon on the Water and the Wound

Trying to drink from the spring

Smallpox

Rest

The Weather Bureau

The Crow

The Sea-Eroded Tableland

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword: A Modernist in the Mountains

Geoffrey O’Brien

Introduction

A Note on the Translations

POEMS

From Spring & Asura (First Collection)

Proem

Refractive Index

The Snow on Saddle Mountain

Thief

The Thief

Love & Fever

Spring & Asura

Daybreak

Sunlight and Withered Grass

Cloud Semaphore

A Break

Rest

Annelid Dancer (Annelida Tänzerin)

Report

The Landscape Inspector

Haratai Sword-Dancing Troupe

A Mountain Patrolman

Traveler

Bamboo & Oak

Masaniello

The Morning of the Last Farewell

Pine Needles

Pine Needles

Voiceless Grief

White Birds

Okhotsk Elegy

Volcano Bay: A Nocturne

Commandment on No Greed

Love in Religious Mode

Past Desire

Single-Tree Field

Ice Fog in Iihatov

Winter & Galaxy Station

From Spring & Asura (Second Collection)

The Moon on the Water and the Wound

Trying to drink from the spring

Smallpox

Rest

The Weather Bureau

The Crow

The Sea-Eroded Tableland

Mountain Fire

From under a poplar

Reservoir Note

Spring

The railroad and the national highway

The Tsugaru Strait

The Horse

Cow

The Bull

Transition of a Bird

Mr. Pamirs the Scholar Takes a Walk

If I pass through this forest

Spring

Spring: Variation

Wind & Cedar

Cloud

When the wind comes

Harvesting the Earless Millet

Wet in soggy cold rain

Night dew and wind mingle desolately

Good Devil Praying for Absolution

Excursion Permit

Zen Dialogue

Fantasy during a Journey

Wind & Resentments

Shadow from the Future

Love-Hate for Poetry

Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a National Park

An Opinion Concerning a Proposed National Park Site

Drought & Zazen

The Iwate Light Railway: July (Jazz)

Residence

A Valediction

The National Highway

From Spring & Asura (Third Collection)

Spring

Somehow I walk up

The Snake Dance

Field

The corn baking in the blue smoke

Banquet

Distant Labor

Distant Work

Cabbage Patch

Hospital

Flowers & Birds: November

Crows in a Hundred Postures

The buckets climb

Cultivation

Sapporo City

Ambiguous Argument about a Spring Cloud

Pig

Malice

Now burnt-out eyes ache

In DQshin-ch Q toward daybreak

The Unruly Horse

The Politicians

Politicians

Devil’s Words: 4

We lived together

The Prefectural Engineer’s Statement Regarding Clouds

At the very end of the blue sky

Raving

Colleagues

A Rice-Growing Episode

Flood

The Master of the Field

The Breeze Comes Filling the Valley

What a coward I am

No matter what he does, it’s too late

Impressions of an Exhibition of Floating-World Paintings

In the leaden moonlight

The Third Art

The Landowner

Hateful Kuma Eats His Lunch

Since the doctor is still young

Night

A few more times

A horse

A Young Land Cultivation Department Technician’s Recitative on Irises

The man I parted from, below

From During Illness & Other Poems

Koreans Pass, Drumming

Pneumonia

ah that

Talking with Your Eyes

past noon it’s three o’clock

when that terrifying black cloud

thump thump thump thump thump

desperately trying to sleep to sleep

Wind is calling me out in front

my chest now

When I open my eyes an April wind

Night

While III

and it must be that I will die soon

(February 1929)

October 20th

(October) 28

Untitled

November 3rd

Two Tanka

On Miyazawa Kenji

Four Images

Tanikawa Shuntaro

We Are All Excellent Musical Instruments

Yoshimasu Gozo

Miyazawa Kenji

Michael O’Brien


Glossary of Japanese Names and Terms

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the author

Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) was one of Japan’s most important experimental poets. His first book of poems, Spring and Asura, was published in 1924. Hiroaki Sato is a translator and essayist living in New York. He writes a monthly column for the Japan Times.