Overview

My Deepest Desire is Tamiki Hara's final work, published posthumously after his tragic suicide in 1951. A short yet grippingly moving meditation on the desire to live a different, fuller life, free from pain, isolation, and the intrusively haunting experience of tragedy, it is a demonstration of how dreams, memories, and traumatic despair intertwine inside a person's psyche.

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9781613322963

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Reviews

""Tamiki Hara, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor, activist and poet/writer, living under the U.S.–led Allied Occupation's control of speeches and publications, wrote about his own confusion, outrage, love and solitude. In spite of the oppressive environment, he repeatedly asserted that what he desired more than anything else in the world was a new world where the dignity of each and every human being was respected and protected, allowing peace to prevail."" - Setsuko Thurlow (born Nakamura Setsuko), a hibakusha and leading figure of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ""Devastated by the atomic blast in Hiroshima, and following his wife's passing, the prolific poet and novelist, Tamiki Hara (1905–1951), expresses his helpless sorrow, loneliness, and despair in an extremely imaginative way. Shingan no Kuni (My Deepest Desire), drafted shortly before his suicide, is a most tragic narrative taken from the pages of Japanese literature. This book provides readers with a trio of Liza Dalby's elegant translation of the sensitive original, along with an amazing set of ink drawings by Sandy Walker committed to denounce nuclear bombs."" - Kazuaki Tanahashi, author of Painting Peace: Art in a Time of Global Crisis ""The depth of Tamiki Hara's heart is so exquisitely expressed that I was brought to a state of wonder and awe. His quietly inventive meditations, memories and dreams are a true gift from the poet who, despite the personal and global tragedy he endured, still could say, 'I want to live as innocent as a bird until the moment death snatches me up.' The combined boldness and sensitivity of Sandy Walker's ink drawings dance across the imagination, startling in their nakedness – a perfect accompaniment to Liza Dalby's pristine translation of Hara's final work."" - Peter Levitt, author of Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom ""The troubled, dreamlike world of atomic bomb survivor Tamiki Hara is vividly and gently recreated here in Liza Dalby's new translation."" - Hiroaki Sato, writer and translator of over forty works of classical and modern Japanese ""It is so very moving to see the black ink brush gently against Hara's last words, seep into them, echo them, explode from deep inside them. Poet and painter are like one. A survivor of the atomic bomb, Hara feels darkness and shadows left on walls but thinks of writing 'a paean to snow,' of light filtering through trees, of 'hot tears' from a single star, of Kanda bookstores and just sitting in cafes. On the edge of the railroad tracks, longing for lost loved ones, he catches the train's energy. Finally, he follows a lark ascending into a meteoric streak of light."" - Doris Bargen, Professor Emeritus of Japanese Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Author Information

Tamiki Hara (Author) Tamiki Hara was a Japanese writer and poet. Born in Hiroshima, he lived through the atomic bombing in 1945. In the years preceding his death, Tamiki Hara wrote about the destruction he witnessed in autobiographical short stories and poems, making him a known figure in the atomic bomb literature genre. Liza Dalby (Translator) Liza Dalby is an anthropologist specializing in Japanese culture. Her nonfiction books, Geisha and Kimono, have become classics, and her best-selling historical novel, The Tale of Murasaki has been translated into nine languages. Dalby's memoir, East Wind Melts the Ice, is a gardener's diary and an enlightening excursion through cultures east and west. Dalby lives in Berkeley, California.

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