On Sept. 21 on this page, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the death of the poet, scientist and religious thinker Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), I turned to him for inspired insight into the Japanese view of nature.
Miyazawa threw himself into the natural world, seeing himself as a minuscule part of it and delighting in its most dramatic appearances.
Another poet, an early contemporary of Miyazawa, Shiki Masaoka (1867-1902), created a world, in his haiku and tanka, of a highly sharpened sentiment. Among his more than 20,000 poems, a great many depict the individual — often himself — in a natural setting. The result is a revelation about both the observer and the observed world.