Takuboku: Poems to Eat / translated by Carl Sesar

Masakazu Kuwata

The artist Masakazu Kuwata was more popularly known in Japan as Masayuki Miyata. He was a book designer for Charles E. Tuttle & Co., and helped to establish the Kodansha International publishing company. He was commissioned by the famed Japanese author Jinuchiro Tanizaki to illustrate his master work, "Pieta of Japan", a copy of which is housed in the Modern Religious Art at the Vatican Museum.

Takuboku Ishikawa (Japan: 1886 - 1912) was a noted modern-style, or tanka, poet who began his career as a part of the Myogo group of naturalist poets, later becoming a socialist whose writings took on more political leanings. In "Poems to Eat" his work is broken into two main chapters: "Handful of Sand" and "Sad Toys", and deals with everyday emotions, observances, and interactions using the short, 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic layout of tanka. Of this work he wrote: 'I got the idea for the title "Poems to Eat" from a beer advertisement I often saw in the streetcar. I mean by it poems that are down to earth, poems with feelings unremoved from real life. Not delicacies, not a feast, but poems that taste like our daily meals; poems then, that are necessities to us.' This artbook was translated by Carl Sesar.