- Kenji Miyazawa
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In this Japanese name, the family name is "Miyazawa".
Kenji Miyazawa 
Kenji MiyazawaBorn August 27, 1896
Hanamaki, Iwate, JapanDied September 21, 1933 (aged 37)
Hanamaki, Iwate, JapanOccupation Writer, Poet, Teacher, Geologist Nationality Japanese Period early Shōwa period Genres Children’s literature, poetry Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢 賢治 Miyazawa Kenji, 27 August 1896 - 21 September 1933) was a Japanese poet and author of children's literature in the early Shōwa period of Japan. He was also known as a devout Buddhist, vegetarian [1] and social activist.
Contents
Early life
Miyazawa was born in what is now Hanamaki city, Iwate Prefecture as the eldest son of a wealthy pawnbroker. From an early age, he was disturbed by what he perceived to be the social inequity between his well-to-do family and the impoverished farmers in the area from whom his family profited by lending them money. Compared to his contemporaries, he demonstrated little interest in romantic love or sex, both in his private life and in his literary work.[2]
In 1918, he graduated from Morioka Agriculture and Forestry College (Currently Iwate University). He was a bright student, so his academic advisor wanted him as an assistant professor. However, differences with his father over religion (he converted to the modern incarnation of Nichiren Buddhism termed Nichirenism or Nichirenshugi 日蓮主義, becoming a follower of the radical nationalist, Tanaka Chigaku and joining Tanaka's Kokuchukai organization in 1920), and his repugnance for the family pawnshop business (he yielded his inheritance to his younger brother), created much unhappiness in his early life, and in 1921, he departed Hanamaki for Tokyo.Literary career
In Tokyo, while staying with a friend, he was introduced to the works of poet Sakutarō Hagiwara, and was encouraged to start writing. After eight months in Tokyo, when he began to write children's stories, he returned to Hanamaki due to the illness and subsequent death of his beloved younger sister.
He found employment as a teacher in agricultural science at Hanamaki Agricultural High School (花巻農学校). Saving his meagre salary, he was able to finance the publication of his first collection of children's stories and fairy tales, Chūmon no Ōi Ryōriten (注文の多い料理店, The Restaurant of Many Orders) and a portion of a collection of free-verse poems, Haru to Shura (春と修羅, Spring and Asura) in 1924. Although neither was a commercial success, his work came to the attention of poets Kōtarō Takamura and Shimpei Kusano, who admired his writing greatly and introduced it to the literary world.
As a teacher, his students viewed him as passionate but rather eccentric, as he insisted that learning came through actual, firsthand experience of things. He often took his students out of the classroom, not only for training, but just for enjoyable walks in the hills and fields. He also had them put on plays they wrote themselves.
From 1926 until his death in 1933, Miyazawa struggled to improve the material and spiritual life of the impoverished peasants of his native Iwate. He introduced new agricultural techniques and new varieties of seeds. He left his position as instructor at Hanamaki Agriculture School in 1926 to establish the Rasu Farmers Association. At the detached house of his family, where he was staying at the time, he gathered a group of youths from nearby farming families and lectured on agronomy. The association also engaged in plays, music, and other cultural activities.
In 1926 he learned Esperanto and tried to translate some of his Japanese poems into the Esperanto language; the translated pieces were published in 1953, long after his death.
His writings from this period show sensitivity for the land and for the people who work in it. A prolific writer of children's stories, many that appear superficially to be light or humorous, all contain stories intended for moral education of the reader. He wrote some works in prose and some stage plays for his students and left behind a large amount of tanka and free verse, most of which was discovered and published posthumously. His poetry, which has been translated into numerous languages, has a considerable following to this day. A number of his children’s works have been made into animated movies (anime) in Japan.
Miyazawa's works were influenced by contemporary trends of romanticism and the proletarian literature movement but, above all, were influenced by his devotion to the Lotus Sutra in particular.
Death
Miyazawa struggled with pleurisy for many years and was often incapacitated for months at a time. He died in 1933 of pneumonia.
Legacy
The Miyazawa Kenji Museum was opened in 1982 in his native Hanamaki city, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death. It displays the few manuscripts and artifacts from Miyazawa's life that escaped the destruction of Hanamaki by American bombers in World War II.
In 1996, to mark the 100th anniversary of Miyazawa's birth, the anime Ihatov Gensou: Kenji no Haru (Ihatov Fantasy: Kenji's Spring; North American title: Spring and Chaos) was released as a depiction of Miyazawa's life. As in the Night on the Galactic Railroad anime, the main characters are depicted as cats.
He loved his native province, and Ihatov (or Ihatovo), the name of the fictional location that appeared in his works, was constructed from the name Iwate (Ihate in the older spelling). Among the variation of names, there is Ihatovo, and the addition of final o is supposed to be the noun ending of Esperanto, whose idea of common international language interested him. This interest is paid tribute to in the 1985 anime adaptation of Ginga tetsudō no yoru (Night on the Galactic Railroad), in which all signs in Giovanni and Campanella's world are written in Esperanto, as well as the written language of the "cats".
Major works
In addition to the works mentioned above, Miyazawa's major works also include:
- Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜, Gingatetsudō no Yoru)
- 風の又三郎 Kaze no Matasaburō
- Gauche the Cellist (Cello Hiki no Goshu)
- The Night of Taneyamagahara (Taneyamagahara no Yoru)
- Vegetarian Taisai
and the poem defining the Japanese ideal,
- Ame ni mo Makezu (Not losing to the rain)
References
- ^ World Vegetarian Congress - Edinburgh, Scotland, Summer 2002 - Souvenirs
- ^ Pulvers, Roger (2007). "Introduction". In Miyazawa, Kenji. Strong in the Rain: Selected Poems. Trans. Roger Pulvers. Bloodaxe Books. pp. 9-28. ISBN 9781852247812. "Kenji, it must be remembered, was a man who displayed no particular interest in romantic love or sex."
- Hara Shirō. Miyazawa Kenji Goi Jiten = Glossarial Dictionary of Miyazawa Kenji. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 1989.
- Miyazawa, Kenji. The Milky Way Railroad. translated by Joseph Sigrist and D. M. Stroud. Stone Bridge Press (1996). ISBN 1880656264
- Miyazawa Kenji. Night of the Milky Way Railroad. M.E. Sharpe (1991). ISBN 0873328205
- Miyazawa Kenji. The Restaurant of Many Orders. RIC Publications (2006). ISBN 1741260191
- Miyazawa Kenji. Miyazawa Kenji Selections. University of California Press (2007). ISBN 0520247795
- Miyazawa Kenji. Winds from Afar. Kodansha (1992).ISBN 087011171X
- Miyazawa Kenji. Once and Forever: The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa. translated by John Bester Kodansha International (1994). ISBN 4770017804
- Ryumonji Bunzō. "Ame ni mo makezu" no konpon shisō: Miyazawa Kenji no Hokekyō Nichirenshugi (The foundational thought of "Ame ni mo makezu": Miyazawa Kenji's Nichirenism). Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan, 1991. ISBN 4804325107
External links
- e-texts of Kenji Miyazawa's works at Aozora bunko
- Night on the Galactic Railroad (1986) at the Internet Movie Database
- Spring and Chaos (2001) at the Internet Movie Database: an animated version of Kenji Miyazawa's life
- The Miyazawa Kenji Museum in Hanamaki
- Fan site in English
- Kenji Miyazawa's grave
Categories:- 1896 births
- 1933 deaths
- Asexual people
- Japanese children's writers
- Japanese poets
- Japanese novelists
- Japanese vegetarians
- Japanese Buddhists
- Japanese Esperantists
- People from Iwate Prefecture
- Deaths from pneumonia
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