Overview

In Kotan Chronicles, Japanese author and activist Genzō Sarashina shares his experience as a second-generation settler in Hokkaido during the 1920s and 1930s. Many of his poems document his encounters with the Ainu, the indigenous people of the island, in an era where the traditional world of the kotan, or Ainu village, was slowly disappearing. Sarashina's distinctive voice probes the ambiguities of the interaction between the Ainu and the Japanese, while depicting both the beauty of Hokkaido's landscape and the back-breaking work required of settlers and Ainu alike to survive there in an era of economic hardship. Kotan Chronicles constitutes an exceptional witness of its times.

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Reviews

'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

'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

Author Information

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. Nadine Willems obtained her PhD in History from the University of Oxford in 2015 and joined the University of East Anglia as lecturer in Japanese history in 2016. She specialises in the intellectual and cultural history of modern Japan, with a particular focus on early twentieth-century transnational revolutionary connections between Europe and East Asia. Her research interests extend to the history of ethnography, proletarian literature and the development of the discipline of geography. Prior to returning to academia in 2008, she worked in media and business in Tokyo for fifteen years.

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