Shuntaro Tanikawa, giant of post-war Japanese poetry, has died

The Japanese author Shuntaro Tanikawa, candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the main post-war poets in that country, died on the afternoon of November 13 at the age of 92 due to problems derived from his advanced age, the Japanese newspaper reported. Nikkei.

The funeral of the translator, also born in 1931 in Tokyo, took place in recent days, with the presence of close relatives, led by his eldest son, Kensaku Tanikawa.

In Mexico the collection of poems has been published Without knowing the world (2007), the first published in Spanish translated directly from Japanese; Two billion light years of solitude (2014), and the anthology Love, jazz, nudity, travel, a midnight kitchen and select poetry (Red Dragon/Japan Foundation, 2024). The Spanish versions were provided by the writer Cristina Rascón Castro.

Simplicity and complexity

The narrator, a friend of Tanikawa for almost two decades, pointed out The Day that he finds the poet’s work fascinating due to the apparent simplicity of the language, but in which the complexity of human nature is manifested. You do not remain indifferent to his poems, and there is always some twist that can provoke tenderness, surprise or makes you think..

Rascón added that the writer experimented in the form of his texts. He changes from minimal verses to long-winded, poetic prose, which is musical, and plays with language based on a lot of freedom and rhythm.

According to the translator, Tanikawa emphasized that he was not an academic person, but rather someone very experimental, and he sought poetry to communicate with the other fine arts, such as sculpture, painting and music, about which he wrote poems.

In an interview with the Ap agency in 2022, Tanikawa expressed: For me, the Japanese language is the land. Like a plant, I put down my roots, drink the nutrients of the Japanese language, sprout leaves, flowers and bear fruit..

He was one of the most read and respected Japanese poets, both in his country and abroad. At the age of 18 he published his first poems in the newspaper Literary World and in 1952 his first book: Two billion light years of solitude.

In addition to poetry, he wrote texts for children, theater, and scripts for film, television, and radio. He translated the comic strip into Japanese Peanuts and the Tales from Mother Goose. He is also responsible for the theme of the series Astro Boy.

In poetry, he moved away from traditional haiku and experimented with free verse in search of new meters and rhythms. The DiVA group performs its poems in a jazz-like style.

He wrote more than 60 books and some were translated into English, French and Chinese, among other languages. The version of one of his collections of poems received the American Book Award in 1988. He obtained the most important literary awards in his country.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization considered the poet a priority translation for being distinctive of Japan since the 1970s.

Many of his poems, such as morning reliefhave been adopted for use in Japanese language textbooks and are appreciated by people of all ages.

Nikkei stated that Tanikawa He expressed his acute sensitivity in easy-to-understand language and published poems with deep poetic sentiment and powerful ideas. He also dedicated himself to reading and gave concerts in various places with his eldest son, the musician Kensaku..

The British newspaper The Guardian He reported this Tuesday that the Japanese author “was kind and simple, and used to read in public with other poets. He never seemed to take himself too seriously, but he often confessed that his only regret in life was never having finished his studies, having abandoned them in the midst of stardom at a young age.

His relative isolation from Japan’s bleakly serious and erudite postwar poetry scene probably helped him adopt his free verse approach that came to innovate and define contemporary Japanese poetics.

The newspaper reported Tanikawa’s position: I’m more curious about where I’ll go when I die. It’s a different world, right? Of course, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die after a major operation or anything like that. I just want to die suddenly.

He is survived by his son Kensaku, a composer; his daughter Shino, and several grandchildren. The funeral was held privately with family and friends. A farewell event is planned in his honor, Kensaku Tanikawa said.

Poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa included in Without knowing the world (Plan C Editores, 2007), published with the permission of the translator Cristina Rascón Castro.

The road to Kurabuchi

The road to Kurabuchi is full of curves
To the north low mountains unfold
To the south you seem to hear the murmur of water flowing in a river

little by little, the curves of the path cross the field that leads towards the mountain,
among the bushes, scattered, the flowers open
If you see them from a distance, they are not showy flowers.
but close by, when you long to cut them, they are all particularly beautiful,

halfway to Kurabuchi my wife and I picked a bunch of flowers
There were few names of flowers that I knew
and so many names of abstract ideas that I know

Sixty years ago I brought flowers to the little house my father built
and arranged them in a white porcelain vase patched with wire
how good it would be to remember this day after death
once I forget all the words