Seeking solace in Tohoku's poets of old
On Oct. 11, 2011, seven months to the day after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region, I stood beside the sole surviving pine tree from a 350-year-old forest of approximately 70,000 similar trees on the coastline of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture. In ...
'The First Modern Japanese': Donald Keene pays tribute to poet Takuboku Ishikawa
In "The First Modern Japanese," Donald Keene pays tribute to Japanese poet Takuboku Ishikawa (1886-1912), who he calls "an extraordinary man, at times shameless but always absorbing and, in the end, difficult to forget." Though I'll take his poetry gladly, I struggle to revere ...
Takuboku Ishikawa: engaged observer
The society of Takuboku Ishikawa's era was in dramatic political flux, and its complex issues became his personal obsessions. After his death, Takuboku's preoccupations came to be seen as a symbol of the social and emotional upheavals of his times. The key word in the ...
