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.

Miyazawa Kenji: Selections (Poets for the Millennium) (Volume 5)

Literature & Fiction

Sato, Hiroaki

Miyazawa, Kenji

History & Criticism

University of California Press

Looking beyond the image of the almost superhuman swordsmen promoted in modern film and literature, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports and arguments, accompanied by insightful commentary, Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power in the 18th century.

Legends of the Samurai

Overlook

Throughout history, Japanese women have excelled in poetry - from the folk songs of the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) compiled in 712 and the court poetry of the 9th to the 14th centuries, on through the age of haikai and kanshi to the 19th century, into the contemporary period when books of women's poems have created a sensation.This anthology presents examples of the work of more than 100 Japanese women poets, arranged chronologically, and of all the major verse forms: choka, tanka, haikai (haiku), kanshi (verse written in Chinese), and free verse. The poems describe not just seasonal changes and the vagaries of love - which form the thematic core of traditional Japanese poetry - but also the devastations of war, childbirth, conflicts between child-rearing and work, experiences as refugees, experiences as non-Japanese residents in Japan, and more.Sections of poetry open with headnotes, and the editor has provided explanations of terms and references for those unfamiliar with the Japanese language. Other useful tools include a glossary of poetic terms, a chronology, and a bibliography that points the reader toward other works by and about these poets. There is no comparable collection available in English.Students and anyone who appreciates poetry and Japanese culture will treasure this magnificent anthology. Editor and translator Hiroaki Sato is a past winner of the PEN America translator prize and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission's 1999 literary translation award.

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology: An Anthology (Japan in the Modern World (Hardcover))

Reference

Routledge

Throughout history, Japanese women have excelled in poetry - from the folk songs of the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) compiled in 712 and the court poetry of the 9th to the 14th centuries, on through the age of haikai and kanshi to the 19th century, into the contemporary period when books of women's poems have created a sensation.This anthology presents examples of the work of more than 100 Japanese women poets, arranged chronologically, and of all the major verse forms: choka, tanka, haikai (haiku), kanshi (verse written in Chinese), and free verse. The poems describe not just seasonal changes and the vagaries of love - which form the thematic core of traditional Japanese poetry - but also the devastations of war, childbirth, conflicts between child-rearing and work, experiences as refugees, experiences as non-Japanese residents in Japan, and more.Sections of poetry open with headnotes, and the editor has provided explanations of terms and references for those unfamiliar with the Japanese language. Other useful tools include a glossary of poetic terms, a chronology, and a bibliography that points the reader toward other works by and about these poets. There is no comparable collection available in English.Students and anyone who appreciates poetry and Japanese culture will treasure this magnificent anthology. Editor and translator Hiroaki Sato is a past winner of the PEN America translator prize and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission's 1999 literary translation award.

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology

Business & Money

Economics

Proudly part of the New Directions Poetry Pamphlets, a mesmerizing collection by a Japanese forerunner of Modernist poetry Hagiwara writes in the preface: “The author’s past life was that of a disconsolate iceberg that drifts and flows in the extreme regions of the northern seas. Looking at the phantom-like auroras from various spots of the iceberg, he yearned, suffered, rejoiced, sorrowed, at times getting angry with himself, as he wandered on vainly with the tides…. Above his heart were always the disconsolate clouded skies of the extreme regions, the soul-ripping winds of the Iceland howling, screaming. He wrote all that painful life and the diary of a real person in these poems.”

The Iceland (New Directions Poetry Pamphlet)

Hagiwara, Sakutaro

New Directions

Everything you want to know about haiku written by one of the foremost experts in the field and the “finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English” (Gary Snyder)
Who doesn’t love haiku? It is not only America’s most popular cultural import from Japan but also our most popular poetic form: instantly recognizable, more mobile than a sonnet, loved for its simplicity and compression, as well as its ease of composition. Haiku is an ancient literary form seemingly made for the Twittersphere―Jack Kerouac and Langston Hughes wrote them, Ezra Pound and the Imagists were inspired by them, Hallmark’s made millions off them, first-grade students across the country still learn to write them. But what really is a haiku? Where does the form originate? Who were the original Japanese poets who wrote them? And how has their work been translated into English over the years? The haiku form comes down to us today as a cliché: a three-line poem of 5-7-5 syllables. And yet its story is actually much more colorful and multifaceted. And of course to write a good one can be as difficult as writing a Homeric epic―or it can materialize in an instant of epic inspiration.
In On Haiku, Hiroaki Sato explores the many styles and genres of haiku on both sides of the Pacific, from the classical haiku of Basho, Issa, and Zen monks, to modern haiku about swimsuits and atomic bombs, to the haiku of famous American writers such as J. D. Salinger and Allen Ginsburg. As if conversing over beers in your favorite pub, Sato explains everything you wanted to know about the haiku in this endearing and pleasurable book, destined to be a classic in the field.

On Haiku

Essays & Correspondence

Princess Shikishi, Emperor Goshirakawa's third daughter, who served as saiin, or shrine vestal, in her teens, left a body of poems luminous with tranquil beauty and sadness. In her own lifetime she was counted among the outstanding poets of the age. In this volume, noted translator Hiroaki Sato makes available in one-line form all of the tanka - 400 poems - attributed to Princess Shikishi. Following an introduction that details Shikishi's era and the prosodic techniques of her time, Sato presents a group of poems gleaned from anthologies - among them a sequence of eleven which Shikishi wrote in condolence for the death of the wife of Fujiwara no Shunzei, her mentor - and three important 100-poem sequences. To provide allusive contexts, many of the poems are accompanied by extensive footnotes and endnotes, often with complete episodes from Tale of Ise and other classical texts.

String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi (Shaps Library of Translations)

Shikishi

Poetry

Univ of Hawaii Pr

No other Asian poetic form has so intrigued and beguiled the English-speaking world as the Japanese haiku. Even before World War I such imagist poets as Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and John Gould Fletcher were experimenting with the form. At that time, Pound well described the haiku as "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Indeed, it is the haiku's sense of immediacy and its precision that continue to appeal to poets and poetry lovers today. In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the haiku, leading to a number of critical studies of the form, studies that have now culminated in the present book. This insightful work not only considers the haiku itself but also the extremely important yet often ignored renga or linked-verse form, out of which the haiku grew. No deep understanding of the haiku is possible without familiarity with the renga. One Hundred Frogs begins with a detailed history and description of the renga and haiku. Many renowned Japanese poets, most notably Basho, are represented in the wealth of translated poetry that illustrates the text. To bring this history up to date, a discussion of modern Japanese and Western haiku is included. Next, the author discusses the craft of translating renga and haiku and explores recent developments in the two forms, offering a representative selection of modern works. To reveal the myriad choices open to translators of renga and haiku, the author provides an in-depth analysis of one of Japan's most famous haiku, Basho's poem about a frog in a pond, and presents a compilation of over one hundred translations and variations of the poem. The book closes with short anthologies of English-language renga and haiku by contemporary Western poets that offer a tantalizing glimpse of the diversity of expression possible with these two forms. An instructive celebration of the renga and haiku, this volume furnishes a new perspective on the work of some of Japan's outstanding poets of old and lays a foundation for the appreciation of the renga and haiku that are being written today.

One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English

Shambhala

Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most translated haiku, is Basho's poem "Old pond / Frog jumps in / The sound of water". In this book, Sato has collected some 135 translations, versions, parodies, and re-creations of "pond-frog-sound", from Lafcadio Hearn, Daisetz Suzuki, Donald Keene, Kenneth Rexroth, Edward Seidensticker, Robert Aitken and Allen Ginsberg. The formats range from the five-seven-five syllables of the original haiku to sonnets, limericks, prose poems, and e.e. cummings-style flights of typographical fancy. Sato's brief introduction provides background, and ink-painting frogs hop across the pages.

One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg

Weatherhill

In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his masterful translations of original samurai

History

Asia

Abrams Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sato, Hiroaki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sato, Hiroaki

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sato, Hiroaki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Miyazawa Kenji: Selections (Poets for the Millennium) (Volume 5)

Legends of the Samurai

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology: An Anthology (Japan in the Modern World (Hardcover))

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology

The Iceland (New Directions Poetry Pamphlet)

On Haiku

String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi (Shaps Library of Translations)

One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English

One Hundred Frogs: From Matsuo Basho to Allen Ginsberg

Legends of the Samurai