Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko
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Beloved Japanese children's poet Misuzu Kaneko wonders: What does snow feel in a drift? Where does day end and night begin? From her seaside home Kaneko writes, but as her fame grows, her family life becomes increasingly strained. In this double-sided, color-illustrated children s book, new English translations of her poetry appear next to Japanese originals, interwoven with her life story.
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Read Harder task #23: Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.
I liked the idea of reading some Japanese poetry for this task, because I work with a few Japanese guys for a subsidiary of a Japanese company that, last October, sent me over to Japan for a few days for a company meeting. That's essentially my entire background with the Japanese culture, other than a childhood love for the Sailor Moon TV show and an ongoing love for that stuff we call sushi (which my coworkers refuse to eat).
I found out Are You an Echo? was at my public library. It is a beautifully illustrated children's book with poetry by a Japanese children's writer who died sometime around 1930, as best as I can tell. The first half of the book is a biography of the poet, Misuzu Kaneko, interspersed with her poetry, and the second half is a collection of her poems side-by-side in English and Japanese. I thought this was really neat to see, and I enjoyed the biography a lot (though I'm not sure how kid-friendly it actually is ... girl had some rough stuff happen in her short life). Overall the poems were very sweet. I can see why her work is so popular in Japan, as even in English it would probably be a good introduction to poetry for kids.
