SOURCE: Introduction to Howling at the Moon: Poems of Hagiwara Sakutarō, pp. xi-xxvi. Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1978.

In the following essay, Sato offers an overview of Hagiwara's development as a poet.

Hagiwara Sakutarō was born the first son of a prosperous physician in Maebashi, Gumma. Toward the end of his life Sakutarō described his birthplace as a "sanguinary, barbarous blank-paper zone utterly devoid of any cultural tradition," but to be fairer to reality, it was a place close enough to Tokyo for him to go there as he liked, yet far enough for him to yearn for "the city" until he finally moved there to live. Traditionally, the first son enjoys most of the family's attention, but in the case of Sakutarō the pampering was extreme. Once, when Sakutarō stubbornly clutched his friend's music box, someone was immediately dispatched to Yokohama to buy one of these rare and...