Kenji Miyazawa

Miyazawa was born in the town of Hanamaki, Iwate, the eldest son of a wealthy pawnbroking couple, Masajirō and his wife Ichi. The family were also pious followers of the Pure Land Sect, as were generally the farmers in that district. By 1918, he was writing in the tanka genre, and had already composed two tales for children. He embraced vegetarianism in the same year. As a result of differences with his father over religion, his repugnance for commerce, and the family pawnshop business in particular (he yielded his inheritance to his younger brother Seiroku), At this time he became a teacher at the Agricultural School in Hanamaki. He found employment as a teacher in agricultural science at Hanamaki Agricultural High School (花巻農学校). His 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"), also self-published, came out in December of the same year. by imparting to them improved, modern techniques of cultivation. He also taught his fellow farmers more general topics of cultural value, such as music, poetry, and whatever else he thought might improve their lives. In August 1926 he established the . 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 Rasuchijin Society also engaged in literary readings, plays, music and other cultural activities. He advocated natural fertilizers, while many preferred a Western chemical 'fix', which, when it failed, did not stop many from blaming Kenji. According to Sibayama Zyun'iti, he started learning Esperanto in 1926, but never reached a high level in the language. He also studied English and German. At some point he translated some of his poems into Esperanto; Kenji's writings from this period show sensitivity for the land and for the people who work in it. He was a prolific writer of children's stories, many of which appear superficially light or humorous but include messages intended for the 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. He showed little interest in romantic love or sex, both in his private life and in his literary work. Kenji's close friend wrote that he died a virgin. Illness and death Kenji fell ill in summer 1928, and by the end of that year this had developed into acute pneumonia. He once wept on learning that he had been tricked into eating carp liver. He struggled with pleurisy for many years and was sometimes incapacitated for months at a time. His health improved nonetheless sufficiently for him to take on consultancy work with a rock-crushing company in 1931. He died the following day, having been exhausted by the length of his discussion with the farmers. After his death, he became known in his district as Kenji-bosatsu (賢治菩薩). ==Early writings==

Kenji started writing poetry as a schoolboy, and composed over a thousand tanka He favoured this form until the age of 24. Keene said of these early poems that they "were crude in execution, [but] they already prefigure the fantasy and intensity of emotion that would later be revealed in his mature work". He was an avid reader of modern Japanese poets such as Hakushū Kitahara and Sakutarō Hagiwara, and their influence can be traced on his poetry, but his life among farmers has been said to have influenced his poetry more than these literary interests. When he first started writing modern poetry, he was influenced by Kitahara, as well as his fellow Iwatean Takuboku Ishikawa He is said also to have written three thousand pages a month worth of children's stories during this period, thanks to the advice of a priest in the Nichiren order, Takachiyo Chiyō. At the end of the year he managed to sell one of these stories for five yen, which was the only payment he received for his writings during his own lifetime. ==Later poetry==

The "charms of Kenji's poetry", critic Makota Ueda writes, include "his high idealism, his intensely ethical life, his unique cosmic vision, his agrarianism, his religious faith, and his rich and colorful vocabulary." Ultimately, Ueda writes, "they are all based in a dedicated effort to unify the heterogeneous elements of modern life into a single, coherent whole." It was in 1922 that Kenji began composing the poetry that would make up his first collection, Haru to Shura. The first of these poems on the death of his sister was , which was the longest. Keene calls it the most affecting of the three. The poem lacks any kind of regular meter, but draws its appeal from the raw emotion it expresses; Keene suggests that Kenji learned this poetic technique from Sakutarō Hagiwara. Only the first part in four of Haru to Shura was published during Kenji's lifetime. Keene was dismissive of the poetic value of the poem, stating that it is "by no means one of Miyazawa's best poems" and that it is "ironic that [it] should be the one poem for which he is universally known", but that the image of a sickly and dying Kenji writing such a poem of resolute self-encouragement is striking. ==Later fiction==

Kenji wrote rapidly and tirelessly. He wrote a great number of children's stories, many of them intended to assist in moral education. His best-known stories include , , , , , , and ==Other writings==

In 1919, Kenji edited a volume of extracts from the writings of Nichiren, a in the Iwate Nippo under a pseudonym. ==Religious beliefs==

Kenji was born into a family of Pure Land Buddhists, but in 1915 converted to Nichiren Buddhism upon reading the Lotus Sutra and being captivated by it. that had initially turned down his service. but a few scholars such as Akira Ueda, Gerald Iguchi and Jon Holt argue otherwise. The Kokuchūkai's official website continues to claim him as a member, also claiming that the influence of Nichirenism (the group's religio-political philosophy) can be seen in Kenji's later works such as Ame ni mo Makezu, while acknowledging that others have expressed the view that Kenji became estranged from the group after returning to Hanamaki. Kenji remained a devotee of the Lotus Sutra until his death. He made a deathbed request to his father to print one thousand copies of the sutra in Japanese translation and distribute them to friends and associates. which led to the construction of the present Shinshōji, Donald Keene suggests that while explicitly Buddhist themes are rare in his writings, he incorporated a relatively large amount of Buddhist vocabulary in his poems and children's stories, and has been noted as taking a far greater interest in Buddhism than other Japanese poets of the twentieth century. Keene also contrasted Kenji's piety to the "relative indifference to Buddhism" on the part of most modern Japanese poets. ==Vegetarianism==

Kenji practiced vegetarianism during two periods: for five years from 1918 after becoming a Lotus Sutra devotee, and from April 1926 until his death. Though Nichiren Buddhist sects don't require vegetarianism due to their "mappo mukai" doctrine (which relaxes the strict adherence to non-killing or ahimsa), he personally maintained this practice. In a 1918 letter, he expressed sympathy for edible creatures. During his time in Tokyo, he subsisted mainly on (small quantities of) potatoes and tofu or fried tofu, developing beriberi which he mistakenly attributed to meat consumption (beriberi is caused by thiamine deficiency, and soybean products including tofu are high in thiamine). As a teacher, he relaxed his dietary restrictions, enjoying soba with tempura and occasionally eel or tempura rice bowls. He would drink alcohol socially and sometimes smoke. During his later years with the Rasu Chijin Association, he returned to a strict vegetarian diet with very simple meals. He stored rice in the well, eating it frozen in winter, with sides such as fried tofu, pickles, or tomatoes. Even when seriously ill with pneumonia, he refused eggs and milk. When his mother secretly fed him carp liver as 'medicine', he discovered the truth and declared, "I would rather die than take the life of a creature," maintaining his principles until death. == Themes ==

He loved his native province, and the mythical landscape of his fiction, known by the generic neologism, coined in a poem in 1923, as Īhatōbu (Ihatov) is often thought to allude to Iwate (Ihate in the older spelling). Several theories exist as to the possible derivations of this fantastic toponym: one theory breaks it down into a composite of I for 'Iwate'; hāto (English 'heart') and obu (English 'of'), yielding 'the heart or core of Iwate'. Others cite Esperanto and German forms as keys to the word's structure, and derive meanings varying from 'I don't know where' to 'Paradise'. 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. ==Reputation==

Kenji's poetry managed to attract some attention during his lifetime. According to Hiroaki Sato, Haru to Shura, which appeared in April 1924, "electrified several of the poets who read it." These included the first reviewer, Dadaist Tsuji Jun, who wrote that he chose the book for his summer reading in the Japan Alps, and anarchist , who called the book shocking and inspirational, and Satō Sōnosuke, who wrote in a review for a poetry magazine that it "astonished [him] the most" out of all the books of poems he had received. However, such occasional murmurs of interest were a far cry from the chorus of praise later directed toward his poetry. In February 1934, some time after his memorial service, his literary friends held an event where they organized his unpublished manuscripts. These were slowly published over the following decade, and his fame increased in the postwar period. The poet Gary Snyder is credited as introducing Kenji's poetry to English readers. "In the 1960s, Snyder, then living in Kyoto and pursuing Buddhism, was offered a grant to translate Japanese literature. He sought Burton Watson’s opinion, and Watson, a scholar of Chinese classics trained at the University of Kyoto, recommended Kenji." Some years earlier Jane Imamura at the Buddhist Study Center in Berkeley had shown him a Kenji translation which had impressed him. Snyder's translations of eighteen poems by Kenji appeared in his collection, The Back Country (1967). The Miyazawa Kenji Museum was opened in 1982 in his native Hanamaki, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death. It displays the few manuscripts and artifacts from Kenji's life that escaped the destruction of Hanamaki in World War II. In 1982, Oh! Production finished an animated feature film adaptation of Miyazawa's Gauche the Cellist, with Studio Ghibli and Buena Vista Home Entertainment re-releasing the film as a double-disc commemoration of Miyazawa's 110th birthday along with an English-subtitle version. Manga artist Hiroshi Masumura has adapted many of Miyazawa's stories as manga since the 1980s, often using anthropomorphic cats as protagonists. 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, is based on Masumura's manga. In 1996, to mark the 100th anniversary of Kenji's birth, the anime Īhatōbu Gensō: Kenji no Haru (''Ihatov Fantasy: Kenji's Spring; North American title: Spring and Chaos'') was released as a depiction of Kenji's life. As in the Night on the Galactic Railroad anime, the main characters are depicted as cats. The Japanese culture and lifestyle television show Begin Japanology aired on NHK World featured a full episode on Miyazawa Kenji in 2008. The JR train was restored with inspiration from and named in honor of his work in 2013. The 2012 manga Bungou Stray Dogs and its anime adaptation feature a character named after and inspired by Miyazawa. His power, supernatural strength and endurance which increases with his hunger, is inspired by and named after "Ame ni mo makezu". The 2015 anime Punch Line and its video game adaptation feature a self-styled hero who calls himself Kenji Miyazawa and has a habit of quoting his poetry when arriving on scene. When other characters wonder who he is after his sudden initial appearance, they point out that he cannot be the "poet who wrote books for kids" because he died in 1933. The 2017 mobile game Magia Record and its anime adaptation make multiple references to Miyazawa's works, especially Night on the Galactic Railroad. ==See also==