101 Modern Japanese Poems by Paul Mccarthy

101 Modern Japanese Poems by Paul Mccarthy

This remarkable anthology features 101 modern Japanese poems by 55 poets, including Shuntarō Tanikawa, Minoru Yoshioka, Taeko Tomioka, Nobuo Ayukawa, Tarō Kitamura, Ryūichi Tamura, Hiroshi Yoshino, Noriko Ibaragi, Gōzō Yoshimasu and Yōji Arakawa, carefully selected by the renowned poet and literary critic Makoto Ōoka to ensure that the chosen poems express each poet’s special character. The collection provides a superb introduction to Japanese poetry from the immediate postwar period to the mid-1990s, and through these works one can sense the movement in poetry that reflected the challenging transitions and dizzying transformations occurring in postwar and contemporary Japan. Selected for inclusion in the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP) by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, this first-ever English edition has been translated by Paul McCarthy with both empathy and artistic felicity, and also includes a critical introduction by the Japanese poet and essayist Chūei Yagi. Suitable for both the student/scholar of modern Japanese literature and the general reader with a passion for poetry, the 101 poems in this authoritative collection will delight and inspire.

“This expansive anthology is essential and rewarding reading to all those interested in modern Japanese poetry” —Review of “101 Modern Japanese Poems” at “Readings in translated Japanese Literature”

Makoto Ōoka (1931– ) is a renowned Japanese poet and literary critic. Ōoka’s poetry column ‘Ori Ori no Uta’ was published every day for 28 years from 1973 in Japan’s leading national newspaper ‘Asahi Shimbun’.

Paul McCarthy has taught Japanese literature at universities in the United States and comparative literature at universities in Japan and Korea for the past 40 years. His translations include Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novella ‘A Cat, a Man and Two Women and Other Stories’, which won the 1991 U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature, as well as other works by Tanizaki, Atsushi Nakajima and Mieko Kanai.