Connotations Press has just published online a bilingual sampling of contemporary Japanese poets, including some of Japan’s most brilliant writers, such as the Tanikawa Shuntarō 谷川俊太郎 (the fun writer sometimes known as “Japan’s national poet”), Takahashi Mutsuo 高橋睦郎 (who is nothing short of a staggering genius in my book), and others. There are a few of my own translations in here, and a more than a few poems that react to the disastrous earthquake last year. The selection was edited by Alan Botsford Saitoh, poet and editor of the annual Poetry Kanto.
Tanikawa Shuntarō, translated by Elliott & Kazuo
Tanikawa Shuntarō 谷川俊太郎. Across the 60 years of Tanikawa’s publishing career he became and remains the most widely-read of all post-war Japanese poets Read more…
Nomura Kiwao, translated by Jordan A. Yamaji Smith
Nomura Kiwao 野村喜和夫 studied Japanese literature at Waseda University and pursued doctoral studies in French literature at Meiji University. Read more..
Tanaka Yōsuke, translated by Jeffrey Angles
Tanaka Yōsuke 田中庸介 (1969- ) is a research scientist specializing in molecular cell biology at the University of Tokyo. Read more…
Hachikai Mimi, translated by Miho Nonaka
Hachikai Mimi 蜂飼耳 was born in 1974, in Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan. She received a Master’s degree in Ancient Japanese literature Read more…
Minashita Kiriu, translated by Leith Morton
Minashita Kiriu 水無田気流 was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1970 and was educated at Waseda University. Her first book of poetry Onsoku Heiwa Read more…
Abe Hinako, translated by Hiroaki Sato
Abe Hinako 阿部日奈子(born 1953). “Born in Samarkand, Uzbek,” she once said of her life, “I moved south through China during the Cultural Revolution Read more…
Hirata Toshiko, translated by Jeffrey Angles
Hirata Toshiko 平田俊子 (1955-) is a prominent Japanese poet and novelist. During the 1980s, she, along with Itō Hiromi, emerged as one of the Read more…
Takahashi Mutsuo, translated by Jeffrey Angles
Takahashi Mutsuo 高橋睦郎 (1937-) is one of Japan’s most prominent living poets. Since first attracting the attention of the Japanese literary world Read more…
Yotsumoto Yasuhiro, translated by Leith Morton
Yotsumoto Yasuhiro 四元康祐 was born in Osaka in 1959, and was educated at Sophia University in Tokyo, and at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more…
Sugimoto Maiko, translated by Carden & Tarcov
Sugimoto Maiko 杉本真維子 (b. 1973, Nagano) published her first chapbook in 1998. Read more…
