‘Dusk like’

鱈つつむ衣の厚きゆふぐれを hibakusha といふ響きするどし

‘Ah me’

ああ吾は誰かの過去世まなかひに雪ふる朝を地の底として

Alan Cummings

Dr. Alan Cummings is Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. His research interests include kabuki dramaturgy and post-war performance. Recent publications include Haiku: Love (British Museum Press, 2013), and “Money is all that matters in the world” in Jones & Watanabe (eds.), A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Modern Metropolis 1850-1920 (University of […]

Karan Kurose

Born in Osaka in 1977. Chief priest of Gannenji Buddhist temple, in Toyama. Studied with the modern tanka poet Ken Kasugai (1938-2004). Has published three volumes of poetry. Works as a poetry judge for the NHK tanka TV programme, and for the Mirai tanka society.

Mutsuo Takahashi

Mutsuo TAKAHASHI (born 1937) is one of Japan’s most prominent and prolific living poets, having won almost every major literary prize in the nation. Since first shocking the Japanese literary world with his bold poetic evocations of homoerotic desire in the 1960s, Takahashi has published several dozens of books of poetry and countless volumes of […]

Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles (born 1971) is a poet, translator, and professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University. His poetry collection written in Japanese, Watashi no hizukehenkōsen (My International Date Line), won one of Japan’s most prestigious literary awards, the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, a rare honor accorded only a few non-native speakers since the award […]