Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is now widely viewed as Japan\'s greatest poet of the 20th century.
The compassion, empathy and closeness to nature expressed in Kenji Miyazawa\'s Poems and tales appealed strongly to a new generation of readers..
But in the 1990s, he received unprecedented attention in the Japanese media.
His mode of active engagement with nature set him apart from virtually all other Japanese poets, and led to his work being largely ignored by the Bundan (the literary establishment) and misunderstood for half a century.
Where other writers tended to use it as a springboard for their own meditations, he saw himself not just as nature\'s faithful chronicler and recorder but as its medium: light, wind and rain are processed through him before being recreated on the page.
Miyazawa drew on nature in a way that no modern Japanese author had before him.
At school, his interest in nature deepened, and he began poring through books on philosophy and Buddhism, which were to strongly influence his later writing.
From a young age, he was fascinated by plants, insects, and especially minerals, which he collected.
Both intensely lyrical and permeated with a sophisticated scientific understanding of the universe, Kenji Miyazawa\'s Poems testify to his deep love of humanity and nature.
Strong in the Rain - the title-poem of this selection - is now arguably the most memorised and quoted modern poem in Japan.
Recognition for his poetry came much later.
Little known in his lifetime, he died at 37 from tuberculosis, but has since become a much loved children\'s author whose magical tales have been translated into many languages, adapted for the stage and turned into films and animations.
Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is now widely viewed as Japan\'s greatest poet of the 20th century
