SOURCE: Introduction to A Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist, Miyazawa Kenji, North Point Press, 1989.

In the following essay, which is a revised version of an introduction originally published in 1989, Sato provides an overview of Miyazawa's life and work.

Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933)—here his and other Japanese names are given the Japanese way, family name first—is probably the only modern Japanese poet who is deified. A good part of the deification may come from a piece called "November 3rd." Opening with the phrases

neither yielding to rain
 nor yielding to wind
 yielding neither to
 snow nor to summer heat

and ending with

called
        a good-for-nothing
              by everyone
 neither praised
 nor thought a pain
       someone
              like that
 is what I want
              to be

it describes in simple, moving words the poet's wishes to do good for others while remaining humble and obscure himself.

"November...