Recollections of a Poet and Other Writings

“Unzen wears a headband, Tara wears a hood”: it is the old Hizen saying for the look of the clouds, and Kanbara Ariake begins his tour of the Matsura country with it. One of the two great symbolist poets of Meiji Japan, he wrote this long essay for a Tokyo newspaper in 1898: a poet's guide to the mountains, bays and porcelain towns of the far west of Kyushu, to a serpent that coiled around a crag seven and a half times, to castles, old poems and legends of embassies from Korea. It is the longest piece here and one of the most delicate.

The nineteen writings in this book move from that landscape to a Tokyo dining room, where the Ryūdo Society of young writers argued about the new literature; to memories of Futabatei Shimei and Mori Ōgai's circle; to fine, opinionated criticism of Shimazaki Tōson, Susukida Kyūkin, George Moore and the theater; and to his own poems. Two sonnets, a narrative poem in 7-5 metre, and eight tales from Pu Songling's Liaozhai zhiyi in Kanbara's Japanese version round out the collection.

Nineteen complete pieces in a new translation from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes and source information. Kanbara's dense classical prose is rendered in formal, unhurried English, and his own slips are kept and noted.