SOURCE: "A Man For All Seasons: Miyazawa Kenji Cultivates His Garden," in The Village Voice, Vol. 34, No. 49, December 5, 1989, pp. 75-6.

In the following review, O'Brien details the sources, imagery, mood, and themes of Miyazawa's poetry.

The Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji, who died in 1933 at the age of 37, became a culture hero on the strength of a single brief poem written toward the end of his obscure and voluntarily impoverished life. "November 3rd"—an unpublished notebook entry probably intended more as a prayer than a poem—sketches a portrait of an idealized ascetic, "neither yielding to rain / nor yielding to wind," "without greed / never getting angry / always smiling quiet- / ly / eating one and a half pints of brown rice / and bean paste and a bit of/ vegetables a day / in everything / not taking oneself / into account," and concludes:

someone
   like that
 is what I want
   to be

Revered as...