Regionalism and Other Poems

A remembered sea draws a poet back toward the land of his childhood. At a northern railway station, local voices awaken something that twenty years away have not erased. In apple orchards, spring flowers and overwhelming snow, Fukushi Kōjirō discovers the ties between place, memory and the individual.

Regionalism presents these encounters in prose poems, including a forceful peasant woman’s monologue in regional speech, its separate colloquial rendering and the author’s defense of writing in local languages. The accompanying poetry collection, Outlook, moves through successive stages of his work: intimate sorrow, fierce declarations, maritime dreams, love and renewed gratitude for life.

This English edition translates both supplied texts completely, preserving prefaces, epigraphs, verse lines, composition dates and author’s notes. Translator notes explain readings and literary allusions, while distinguishing the supplied edition’s stated omissions from the material actually present. Together the works reveal a poet seeking both an individual voice and the ground from which that voice draws strength.