Description: Kotan Chronicles takes the reader into the lives of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, and their interaction with Japanese settlers in the 1920s and 1930s. With a distinctive and powerful artistic voice, the poems probe this extraordinary cultural encounter in Japan's far north.
Brief description: Genzō Sarashina was born in eastern Hokkaido in 1904, the son of first-generation Japanese settlers. An anarchist, and a politically and socially engaged poet in his youth, he was a vocal critic of the Japanese government's policy of assimilation of the indigenous Ainu Community. He worked as a farmer and, until he was dismissed for refusing to teach the government-prescribed history syllabus, as a teacher in an elementary school most of whose pupils were Ainu children. His first poetry collection, Taneimo (Seed Potatoes), was published in 1930 and addressed in vigorous and colloquial language the plight of both poor migrant settlers and Ainu people. After the war, he continued to publish poetry and became a noted expert on Ainu culture. He died in 1985.
Review Quotes:
'These valuable translations, prefaced by an expertly written scholarly introduction, provide a compelling and trenchant account of life on the geographic and intellectual frontiers of imperial Japan. These starkly beautiful poems document the complexity of existence at the intersection of Japanese-settler and Ainu historical experience, in years marked by struggle and privation throughout the empire.' Paul D. Barclay, Chair of Asian Studies, Lafayette College
'Such a rare treat - one of the few examples of Japanese proletarian poetry to appear in English. Sarashina's work, like that of American Objectivist Charles Reznikoff, is a poetry of testimony, one in which he documents the lives of those living in pre-war Hokkaido, often in their own words. To do this, Sarashina allows multiple voices and dialects into his writing, which makes the job of translator especially difficult. This courageous version not only captures the colloquial, multivocal style of the original poems, but also constitutes an important document in the recuperation of pre-war Japanese poetry.' Eric Selland