Kenneth Rexroth’s readings from the Japanese master poets are as fine as Arthur Waley’s, breathtaking in their simplicity and clarity.
— Selden Rodman, New York Times Book Review
Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955) proved such an extremely popular book that he put together a sequel. The poems are representative of a large range of classical, medieval, and modern poetry, but the emphasis, as in his companion Chinese collections (1955 and 1970), is on folk songs and love lyrics. And because women have had such an outstanding role in Japanese literature, included here are selections from the work, among others, of the remarkable early twentieth-century poet Yosano Akiko and the more contemporary, deeply sensuous Marichiko. As in the earlier volume, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese presents the original texts in romaji, the transliteration into the Western alphabet, while the authors’ names are given in traditional calligraphy.
