Also know as Miyazawa Kenzi. Born: Hanamaki, 27 August 1896. Education: Kaj5 Primary School, Hanamaki, 1903-09, Morioka Middle School, 1909-14; studied agriculture and soil science at the Morioka K5t5 N5rin Gakk5 (later the Agricultural School of Iwate University), 1915-18. Family: Unmarried, lived most of his life in his parents’ home. Career: After his graduation in 1918 served intermittently as research assistant at the agricultural school in Morioka, officially giving up the post in 1920; during this time, as eldest son, he struggled with his parents’ wish for him to manage the family pawnshop business, a role he resisted; wrote children’s stories and free verse poems, 1918-; taught at the Hanamaki Agricultural School, 1921-26; farmed family-owned land near Hanamaki while working to improve local farming conditions, 1926-28; increasingly troubled by lung disease, from 1928; worked briefly as engineer and salesman for local lime works but forced to quit due to poor health, 1931. Died: Of tuberculosis in Hanamaki, 21 September 1933.
Publications
Collections
Chumon no oi no ryoriten (nine children’s stories). 1922.
Miyazawa Kenji zenshu [Complete works]. 3 vols. 1934-35.
Miyazawa Kenji zenshu [Complete works]. 7 vols. 1939-44.
Miyazawa Kenji zenshu [Complete works]. 11 vols. 1956-58.
Kohon Miyazawa Kenji zenshu [Variorum edition of complete works]. 15 vols. 1973-77.
Shinshu Miyazawa Kenji zenshu [Newly edited complete works]. 17 vols. 1979-80.
Fiction
Ginga tetsudo no yoru (novella). Probably written 1924-33; as Night Train to the Stars translated by John Bester, 1987; as Night of the Milky Way Railway translated by Sarah Strong, 1991; also translated by Roger Pulvers, 1996, and Seigrist and Stroud, 1998.
Kaze no Matasaburo (novella). Probably written 1923-33; as Matasaburo the Wind Imp, translated by John Bester, 1992.
Gusuko Budori no denki (novella). 1932.
”Futago no hoshi” (children’s story). Probably written 1918; as ”The Twin Stars” translated by Sarah Strong 1998.
”Kumo to namekuji to tanuki” (children’s story). Probably written 1918; as ”The Spider, the Slug and the Racoon” translated by John Bester in Once and Forever, 1994.
”Yukiwatari” (children’s story). 1921; as ”Crossing the Snow” translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor, 2000.
”Kai no hi” (children’s story). Probably written 1922; as ”The Fire Stone” translated by John Bester in Winds from Afar, 1972; as ”Gem Fire” translated by Sarah Strong, 1997.
”Yamanashi” (children’s story). Probably written 1923; as ”The Wild Pear” translated by John Bester, in Once and Forever, 1993.
”Chumon no 5i ry5riten” (children’s story). 1924; as ”The Restaurant of Many Orders” translated by John Bester in Winds and Wildcat Places, 1967.
”Donguri to yamaneko” (children’s story). 1924; as ”Wildcat and the Acorns” translated by John Bester in Winds and Wildcat Places, 1967; translated by Sarah Strong 2000.
”Shishi odori no hajimari” (children’s story). 1924; as ”The First Deer Dance” translated by John Bester in Winds and Wildcat Places, 1967.
”Suisengetsu no yokka” (children’s story). 1924; as ”The Red Blanket” translated by John Bester in Winds and Wildcat Places, 1967; as ”On the Fourth Day of the Narcissus Month” translated by Sarah Strong, 1997.
”Tsukiyo no denshinbashira” (children’s story). 1924; as ”March by Moonlight” translated by John Bester in Once and Forever, 1993; translated as ”The Telegraph Poles on a Moonlit Night” by Sarah Strong, 2000.
”Yamaotoko no shigatsu” (children’s story). 1924; as ”The Man of the Hills” translated by John Bester in Once and Forever, 1993.
”Hikari no suashi” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s; as ”The Shining Feet” translated by Sarah Strong, 1997.
”Ich5 no mi” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s.
”Kenju k5en rin” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s; as ”Kenju’s Wood” translated by John Bester in Once and Forever, 1993; as ”The Kenju Park Grove” translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor, 1999.
”Nametoko yama no kuma” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s; as ”The Bears of Mt. Nametoko” translated by John Bester in Winds from Afar, 1972; also translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor, 1998.
”Sero-hiki no G5shu” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s; as ”Gorsh the Cellist” translated by John Bester in Winds from Afar, 1972.
”Yodaka no hoshi” (children’s story). Probably written 1920s; as ”The Night Hawk Star” translated by John Bester in Winds and Wildcat Places, 1967.
”Hokushu Sh5gun to sannin ky5dai no ishi” (children’s story). 1931; as ”General Son Ba-yu and the Three Physicians” translated by John Bester in Winds from Afar, 1972.
Verse
Haru to shura (free verse collection). 1924.
Many poems from this volume translated by Hiroaki Sato in Spring & Asura, 1973 and A Future of Ice, 1989.
Haru to shura Vol. II (free verse collection). 1924-26.
Many poems from this volume translated by Hiroaki Sato in Spring & Asura, 1973 and A Future of Ice, 1989.
Haru to shura Vol. III (free verse collection). 1926-27.
Many poems from this volume translated by Hiroaki Sato in Spring & Asura, 1973 and A Future of Ice, 1989.
”Eiketsu no asa.” 1924; as ”The Last Farewell” translated by Hiroaki Sato, 1973.
”Matsu no ha.” 1924; as ”Pine Needles” translated by Hiroaki Sato, 1973.
”Musei d5koku.” 1924; as ”Voiceless Lament” translated by Hiroaki Sato, 1973.
”Juichi gatsu mikka/Ame ni mo makezu.” 1931; as ”November 3rd” translated by Hiroaki Sato, 1973.
Plays
Banana Taisho (musical; performed 1923). Porano no hiroba (musical; performed 1924).
Taneyama-ga-hara no yoru (musical; performed 1924).
Other
Nomin geijutsu gairon koyo (treatise). Written 1926.
Critical Studies:
Hyoden Miyazawa Kenji by Sakai Tadaichi (also, Chuichi), 1968; Togi: Ginga tetsud5 no yoru to wa nani ka by Irisawa Yasuo and Amazawa Taijir5, 1976 (new edition, 1990); Miyazawa Kenji ron, 3 vols. by Onda Itsuo, 1981; Miyazawa Kenji ron shu, 3 vols. by Ozawa Toshir5 1987; Miyazawa Kenji: Yojigenron no tenkai by Sait5 Bun’ichi, 1991; ”The Ideals of Miyazawa Kenji,” Ph.D. dissertation by Mallory Blake Fromm, 1980; ”The Poetry of Miyazawa Kenji,” Ph.D. dissertation by Sarah Strong, 1984; ”The Theme of Innocence in Miyazawa Kenji’s Tales,” Ph.D. dissertation by Takao Hagiwara, 1986; ”Miyazawa Kenji and the Lost Gandharan Painting” by Sarah Strong in Monumenta Nipponica, 1986; ”Innocence and the Other World: The Tales of Miyazawa Kenji” by Takao Hagiwara in Monumenta Nipponica, 1992; ”The Bodhisattva Ideal and the Idea of Innocence in Miyazawa Kenji’s Life and Literature” by Takao Hagiwara, in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, 1993; ”Miyazawa Kenji: His Stories, Characters, and World View,” Ph.D. dissertation by Kerstin Vidaeus, 1994.
While virtually unknown during his lifetime, Miyazawa Kenji became a highly recognized writer in Japan with the publication of his collected works shortly after his death in 1933. His popularity since has remained strong, becoming nothing short of phenomenal in the last three decades of the 20th century as more and more popular and scholarly studies of his works appeared, feature films based on his stories and biography played in cinemas and on television, and tourists flocked to the memorial museum in his hometown of Hanamaki in northern Japan’s Iwate Prefecture.
Most of the popular enthusiasm for Miyazawa’s works is based on his children’s stories and on his longer novellas, which also were written for a youthful audience. Despite their designation as being for children, these stories have always attracted a wide adult readership and are the subject of extensive critical and scholarly study. While different readers are drawn to different aspects of Miyazawa’s tales, many report being attracted to their imaginative richness, to their vivid depiction of the natural world of early 20th-century rural Iwate Prefecture, to their often luminous reflection of Miyazawa’s Buddhist worldview and values, and to the humor and compassion with which the author depicts the foibles of both human and animal behavior.
While most of Miyazawa’s stories are to varying degrees fantasies, they cover a wide range of subject matter and style. Some, such as ”Donguri to yamaneko” (”Wildcat and the Acorns”), ”Kai no hi” (”The Fire Stone”), and ”Kumo to namekuji to tanuki” (”The Spider, the Slug and the Racoon”), involve talking animal characters within a clear narrative plot. It has been remarked that while Miyazawa’s animal characters are not without human aspects, they retain much more of their animal nature than do the talking beasts in such western stories as Aesop’s fables. It is not only animals that talk in these tales; some of Miyazawa’s most evocative pieces involve plants as speaking subjects. In ”Ich5 no mi” and ”Yamanash” (”The Wild Pear”), for example, the reader is invited to listen in on the poignant conversations of ginkgo nuts and wild pears registering a dawning awareness of their individual impermanence within the cycle of life.
Some of Miyazawa’s most moving stories involve characters from very poor, up-land rural families whose members draw their living from the hills by making charcoal, hunting bear, pasturing horses, etc. ”Hikari no suashi” (”The Shining Feet”), ”Suisengetsu no yokka” (”The Red Blanket”), ”Nametoko yama no kuma” (”The Bears of Mt. Nametoko”), and the novella Kaze no MatasaburO (MatasaburO the Wild Imp) are good examples of such tales. The characters in them, whether children or adults, always speak in the rural Iwate dialect. Despite the harsh circumstances of the lives depicted, many contemporary readers value the regionalism Miyazawa successfully captures in these stories.
Miyazawa probably first began writing stories in 1918 with his production increasing dramatically in 1921. Only a few of the stories he poured out in the early 1920s and continued to write and to rewrite until his death in 1933, were published during his lifetime. The vast majority were found in manuscript form after his death, most in a confused state of multiple drafts and rewrites with occasional gaps and illegible passages. Immediately after the writer’s death, Miyazawa’s brother, Seiroku, began to work to see that these manuscripts were put in order and published. The effort took time and progressed by stages, but by the 1970s, aided by Miyazawa’s growing popularity and the detailed textual scholarship of Amazawa Taijir5, Irisawa Yasuo and others, Seiroku, succeeded in publishing literally all of this brother’s surviving manuscripts.
This unusual history of literary production and publication means that that reader of any one of Miyazawa’s stories is presented with a work in progress. Many works exist in two or more fairly distinct versions. One of Miyazawa’s most beloved tales is Ginga tetsudO no yoru (Night of the Milky Way Railway). This novella-length fantasy of a journey along the celestial railway of the Milky Way is an example of a story with more than one version. While the latest rendering is arguably more developed as a narrative, many readers prefer the earlier version with its mysterious Professor Bulcaniro, a telepathic figure whose mental ”experiment” becomes the source of the fantastic journey.
In addition to his children’s stories and novellas, Miyazawa is also known for his free-verse poems. As a schoolboy and young man Miyazawa wrote poems in the traditional 31-syllable tanka form. By 1921 he had begun to experiment with free verse written in a unique stream of consciousness style that he called ”the mental sketch.” In these sketches he uses indentation to indicate varying levels of interiority with the most objective thoughts and observations left unindented. While this strategy indicates an awareness of western, psychoanalytic notions of the structure of the psyche, Miyazawa’s mental sketches are also influenced by Buddhist concepts of consciousness. The acts of consciousness that Miyazawa ”sketches” in his poems, while linked to particular settings and moments in time, are intellectually sophisticated. Among other things, the poet brings his knowledge of early 20th-century science as well as Buddhist scripture to his verse, at times blending these seemingly disparate forms of knowledge within a single reflection.
Miyazawa published Haru to shura, a collection of 69 mental sketch poems, in 1924. While little noticed at the time, the volume eventually won high critical acclaim. Much of the artistic success of Haru to shura rests in the emotional intensity of the poems Miyazawa wrote about the death of his sister Toshiko in November 1922 and his subsequent mourning for her. They are ranked among the most moving free-verse poems in Japanese.
Miyazawa went on to compile two additional volumes of mental sketch poems under the Haru to shura title. But even more than these volumes of complex, stream of consciousness verse, Miyazawa’s name as a poet is deeply associated with the simple, declarative lines of a notebook entry he made on 3 November 1931 at a time when he was travelling alone and very ill. Popularly known by its opening line, ”Ame ni mo makezu” (undaunted by the rain), the poem expresses Miyazawa’s altruistic wish to live a life of service to the rural poor.
The desire for service and self-sacrifice expressed in ”Ame ni mo makezu” and elsewhere in Miyazawa’s works resonated with values of individual renunciation promoted during Japan’s war years. The initial reputation for ”saintliness” he acquired at this time continued through the post-war period. In the 1970s however, studies emerged that called for a more complex assessment of Miyazawa’s life and work, a pattern of critical reception that continues to this day. Given Miyazawa’s enormous popularity in Japan and the imaginative power of his stories and poems, with their close attention to the natural world and their fusion of Buddhist and scientific world views, he merits more international attention than he has yet received.
