4篇の詩

Yoshihara Sachiko (1932–2002) was born in Yotsuya, Tokyo. The youngest of four children, she excelled in school and took to reading her siblings’ books. Through them she discovered modernist poets like Hagiwara Sakutarō and Nakahara Chūya. Though she was forced to relocate in 1944 and 1945 to escape the Allied bombings of Tokyo, she returned to find a most encouraging mentor in her high school Japanese teacher, the poet Naka Tarō. After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1956, Yoshihara entered a period that was to have a profound influence on her writing: she married in 1958, became a mother in 1961, and divorced in 1962. Not long after, she struck up an association (facilitated by Naka Tarō) with the Rekitei group of poets, a movement which placed a distinct emphasis on the recitation and sound value of poetry. Yoshihara’s first collection, Litanies for Youth, appeared in 1964.

James Garza is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and tNY.Press. He holds an M.A. in Japanese studies from the University of Arizona.