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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Poetry

Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko

October 20, 2016 by Ash Brown

Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu KanekoAuthor: Misuzu Kaneko, David Jacobson
Illustrator: Toshikado Hajiri

Translator: Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi
Publisher: Chin Music Press
ISBN: 9781634059626
Released: September 2016

Misuzu Kaneko, who in the 1920s was a well-known author of poetry for children, almost faded into obscurity after her early death at the age of twenty-six only to have her work rediscovered in 1982. Since then her poetry has been met with great admiration and acclaim. Despite having her work translated into nearly a dozen different languages, Kaneko is relatively unknown in English. Are You an Echo?: The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko, published by Chin Music Press in 2016, is a beautifully illustrated and crafted children’s book created by a multi-national team with members hailing from Japan, the United States, and Canada in an effort to bring Kaneko’s work to a larger audience. Before reading Are You an Echo? I was unaware of both Kaneko and her poetry. After reading the volume I can only hope that more of her work will be translated in the future–the book is a marvelous introduction.

Are You an Echo? consists of two main parts. The first is a biographical narrative written by David Jacobson, a journalist and editorial consultant at Chin Music Press, which outlines both the life of Kaneko and the history of her work and its rediscovery by Setsuo Yazaki, another poet who also provides the foreword to the book. Although Are You an Echo? is meant for a young audience, Jacobson is honest and touches upon some of the sadder aspects of Kaneko’s story such as her unhappy marriage, unfortunate illness, and eventual decision to end her own life. However, the topics are handled with gentleness and sensitivity. Several of Kaneko’s poems are incorporated directly into the narrative while the second part of Are You an Echo? is specifically devoted to a selection of her work. The poems are presented in both their original Japanese and in an English translation jointly composed by Michiko Tsuboi and the poet Sally Ito.

Are You an Echo?, page 5The format is somewhat unusual for a children’s book, but I feel the decision to include a biography along with a selection of Kaneko’s work in a single volume is ultimately a good one. Are You an Echo? not only introduces Kaneko’s poetry, it also places it within a greater context. Jacobson’ s narrative is easily accessible and the story of how Kaneko and her work have come to positively influence the lives of so many people is a wonderful one. Hajiri’s illustrations are likewise captivating. The artwork is colorful without being garish and has a gentle softness to it that complements both Jacobson’s text and Kaneko’s poetry. Hajiri depicts scenes from Kaneko’s life and imagination and provides a lovely visual accompaniment to and interpretation of her work.

Twenty-five of Kaneko’s surviving five-hundred-twelve poems are included in Are You an Echo?. The translators have taken obvious care in rendering Kaneko’s work into English. Kaneko wrote in a feminine form of Japanese which doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English, but Ito and Tsuboi have successfully crafted a translation that reads well and captures the feelings and intentions of the originals. The poems collected in Are You an Echo? are utterly delightful. One of the things that I found most striking about Are You an Echo? is the tremendous empathy that Kaneko exhibits through her work. Though a touch of melancholy can frequently be found, the poems embody the natural curiosity, wonder, and earnestness of the children for whom she was writing. Kaneko’s poetry is immensely charming and deeply compassionate; I am so incredibly glad to have encountered it. While the book may be intended and suited for younger readers, there is still plenty for adults to enjoy and appreciate about it, too. Are You an Echo? is a treasure.

Thank you to Chin Music Press for providing a copy of Are You an Echo? for review.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: Chin Music Press, David Jacobson, Misuzu Kaneko, Nonfiction, Poetry, Toshikado Hajiri

Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, Vol. 4

October 18, 2014 by Ash Brown

Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, Volume 4Editors: Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen
Publisher: A Public Space
ISSN: 2159-7138
ISBN: 9780615962757
Released: March 2014

The original Monkey Business was a Japanese literary journal was published between 2008 and 2011. 2011 also saw the launch of Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, the English-language, international edition of the journal. Edited by Motoyuki Shibata, who was also heavily involved with the original Monkey Business, and Ted Goossen, the English-language Monkey Business is released annually and collects a variety of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and manga. The selections found in the fourth volume of the journal, published in 2014, come from a range of sources, including but not limited to the original Monkey Business and its followup journal Monkey (launched in 2013). In addition to works that had previously been published, some of the contributions selected were specifically commissioned for the fourth issue. I’ve been reading and enjoying the international edition of Monkey Business since its beginning and always look forward to the newest volume.

The fourth issue of the international edition of Monkey Business collects twenty-three works, mostly short stories, contributed by creators from Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The earliest work was originally published in 1845 while the most recent contributions were released for the first time in this particular volume. Quite a few of the artists and authors are returning to Monkey Business, including some of my personal favorites. I’m always glad to see more of Toh Enjoe’s work translated and I was not at all disappointed with his bizarre short story “A Record of My Grandmother.” I’ve also become rather fond of Keita Jin’s short stories and very much enjoyed “The Girl Behind the Register Blows Bubbles.” Some selections like Hiromi Kawakai’s “People from My Neighborhood” and Sachiko Kishimoto’s “The Forbidden Diary” are continuations from previous volumes of Monkey Business. I particularly look forward to reading those authors from one issue to the next. I also really enjoyed Masatsuga Ono’s short story, “The Man Who Turned Into a Buoy.” This actually surprised me a bit as I usually struggle with Ono’s work. Another favorite was Gen’ichirō Takahashi very strange story “Demon Beasts.”

Other returnees to Monkey Business include Stuart Dybek with the short story “Naked,” Hideo Furukawa with “The Bears of Mount Nametoko,” Yoko Hayasuke with “Eri’s Physics,” Mina Ishikawa with “The Lighthouse on the Desk” (which is a collection of tanka poems), Mieko Kawakami with the story “The Little Girl Blows Up Her Pee Anxiety, My Heart Races,” Taki Monma with “White Socks,” and Richard Powers with “The Global Distributed Self-Mirroring Subterranean Soul-Sharing Picture Show,” a fascinating essay about Haruki Murakami’s fiction and brain science. The two manga contributions included in the fourth volume of Monkey Business are also from artists who have been a part of the journal in the past. Brother and Sister Nishioka adapt Bruno Schulz’ story “Tailors’ Dummies” (it’s nice to see them branch out from works by Franz Kafka) and Fumiko Takano illustrates a highly abstract adaptation of “The Little Match-Girl” by Hans Christian Anderson. A translation of Anderson’s original story is also included, which is particularly helpful for those readers who are not familiar with it when trying to make narrative sense of Takano’s rendition.

While it’s wonderful to see so many returning creators to Monkey Business, I also greatly appreciate that the journal always includes someone or something new. “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”, the fourth volume’s opening work by Craft Ebbing & Co., is probably the most unusual–a series of photographs of an art piece with accompanying narration. Of all the newcomers to this issue of Monkey Business, I particularly enjoyed Brian Evenson’s short story “The Punish” and the tangentially related “A Message to My Japanese Readers,” a collection of short essays by Evenson and three other authors (Laird Hunt, Denis Johnson, and Salvador Plascencia). Other short stories from authors new to the journal include Doppo Kunikida’s “Unforgettable People,” Kenji Miyazawa’s “The Restaurant of Many Orders” (previously I had only read examples of his poetry), David Peace’s “After Ryūnosuke, Before Ryūnosuke” and Hyakken Uchida’s “The Sarasate Disk.” Overall, I don’t feel that the fourth volume was quite as diverse as previous issues of Monkey Business. However, it’s still a solid collection. Many of the stories tend toward the slightly strange, bizarre, and absurd, but that’s a sort of fiction that I happen to enjoy.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: A Public Space, manga, Monkey Business, Motoyuki Shibata, Nonfiction, Poetry, Ted Goossen

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