Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, master of modern free verse, dies at 92

TOKYO (AP) — Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died. He was 92.

Tanikawa, who translated the “Peanuts” comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series “Astro Boy,” died Nov. 13, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said Tuesday. He said his father died at a Tokyo hospital due to old age.

Shuntaro Tanikawa stunned the literary world with his 1952 debut “Two Billion Light Years of Solitude,” a bold look at the cosmic in daily life, sensual, vivid but simple in its use of everyday language. Written before Gabriel García Márquez’ “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” it became a bestseller.

Tanikawa’s “Kotoba Asobi Uta,” or “Word Play Songs,” is a rhythmical experiment in juxtaposing words that sound similar, such as “kappa,” a mythical animal and “rappa,” a horn, that makes for a joyful singsong compilation, filled with alliterations and onomatopoeia.

“For me, the Japanese language is the ground. Like a plant, I place my roots, drink in the nutrients of the Japanese language, sprouting leaves, flowers and bearing fruit,” he said in a 2022 interview with The Associated Press at his Tokyo home.

Tanikawa explored the poetic, not only in the repetitive music of the spoken word but also the magic hidden in little things.

One of his works is titled, “I wanted to talk to you in the kitchen in the middle of the night.”

“In the past, there was something about it being a job, being commissioned. Now, I can write as I want,” he said.

In every work Tanikawa tackled, including the script for Kon Ichikawa’s “Tokyo Olympiad,” a documentary film of the 1964 Tokyo Games, the respectful love for the beauty of the Japanese language resonates.

He also translated Mother Goose, Maurice Sendak and Leo Lionni. Tanikawa has in turn been widely translated, including English, Chinese and various European languages.

Some of his works were made into picture books for children, and they are often featured in Japanese school textbooks. He also incorporated Japanese words derived from foreign origins into his poems like Coca-Cola.

In his prose poem with that title, in which a boy is opening a Coke can, he wrote: “If, for instance, he saw the infinite universe that started or ended at the tip of his can, he was totally unaware of it. One might be able to opine that he named every bit of the unknown about to swallow him with all the vocabulary he could muster, which included his future vocabulary that was yet dormant in his subconscious.”

In his debut poem that catapulted him to stardom, he is more sparse:

“Because the universe goes on expanding, we are all uneasy. With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude, I suddenly sneezed,” is the way the poem ends, as translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura.

When asked about it, Tanikawa acknowledged it felt as though someone else had written it, but noted he still thought it was a good poem.

“Tanikawa’s poetry reflects a metaphysical and quasi-religious attitude toward experience. In simple, spare language, he sketches profound ideas and emotional truths,” according to the Poetry Foundation, a U.S. literary organization.

Tanikawa was born in 1931, a son of philosopher Tetsuzo Tanikawa, and began writing poetry in his teens, circulating with the famous poets of that era, like Makoto Ooka and Shuji Terayama.

He said he used to think poems descended like an inspiration from the heavens. But, as he grew older, he felt the poems welling up from the ground.

In person, Tanikawa was friendly and unassuming, often reading in public with other poets. He never seemed to take himself too seriously but used to confess his one regret in life was never finishing his education, having dropped out amid stardom at a young age.

His relative isolation from the bleakly serious scholarly poetry scene of postwar Japan likely helped him take his free-verse approach that went on to innovate and define Japanese contemporary poetics.

Tanikawa said he wasn’t afraid of death, implying he perhaps meant to write a poem about that experience, too.

“I am more curious about where I will go when I die. It’s a different world, right? Of course, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die after major surgery or anything. I just want to die, all of a sudden,” he said.

He is survived by his son, musician Kensaku Tanikawa and daughter Shino and several grandchildren. Funeral services were held privately with family and friends. A farewell event in his honor is being planned, Kensaku Tanikawa said.

“As they did with all of you, Shuntaro’s poems stunned and moved me, making me chuckle or shed a tear. Wasn’t it all so fun?” he said. “His poems are with you forever.”

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Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://x.com/yurikageyama