Shuntaro Tanikawa has been the most inventive modern Japanese poet, ever since he publishedTwo Billion Light Years of Solitude (1952), his first book, aged twenty one. Undamaged by
Japan’s post-War trauma, he took up the language and ran with it. He has continued running. When in 1968 his first Collected Poems appeared the critics noted at once his popularity and
his refusal to compromise with the negative tones that dominated the poetic palette of contemporary Japan. This new selection supplements his originalSelected Poems published by
Carcanet in 1998.
