Kenji Miyazawa

Chiisai_Pholcidae68

Is anyone here a fan of Kenji Miyazawa's works?

He was a devout Buddhist.

He wrote a lot of poetry and fables.

His poetry is beautiful.

riverflow

Yes! I've only read a small handful of his poetry. The Milky Way Railroad is a wonderful story. I have yet to delve into a collection of short stories Once and Forever. Its a shame there does not seem to be much of his works in English translation (still in print).

I found out about him in Gene Reeves' introduction to the Lotus Sutra. I had never head of him before then, but I was immediately intrigued.

We lived together
A single year
She was gentle, pale
Her eyes day and night dreaming dreams far beyond me
One morning in the summer of our year
A village girl was selling flowers on a bridge on the edge of town
They were so beautiful
I bought twenty sen worth and took them home with me
My wife put them in an empty goldfish bowl
And displayed them in our shop
When I returned in the evening
My wife took one look at me and smiled mysteriously
I saw a spread on our table of all kinds of fruit
And white European plates
I asked her where these things came from, and she said
"I sold the flowers which you brought today for a full two yen" ... the stars and the blue night wind
the reed blinds and the flame that despatches the soul ...
Then that winter my wife
Without the slightest suffering
Fell ill for one day, wilted, crumbled, and passed away.

riverflow

In a slightly similar vein, many of Yasunari Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories are very good-- though often somewhat more bleak, many of them are quite magical.