Author · 1896–1933
宮沢賢治Miyazawa Kenji · みやざわ けんじ
Miyazawa Kenji was a poet and writer of children's stories from Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture. He studied agricultural science in Morioka and later taught at an agricultural school. He devoted much of his life to helping local farmers improve their methods and their cultural lives. He was a devout Buddhist, and his faith, love of nature and interest in science run through his writing. His fame came after his death, with works such as 銀河鉄道の夜, 風の又三郎 and the poem 雨ニモマケズ.
Stories by Miyazawa Kenji
Departure Morning on the Ginkgo Tree
The Wild Pear in the Stream
Tales of the Parlour Child
The Restaurant That Asked Too Much
The Police Chief and His Favourite Pastime
The Wildcat's Acorn Trial
The Star Twins by the Silver River
Homoi and the Shell-Fire Jewel
The White Elephant Who Wandered into Otsuberu's Threshing Shed
How the Nighthawk Became a Star
Over the Frozen Snow
いちょうの実 — Departure Morning on the Ginkgo Tree
This is a short children's tale by Miyazawa Kenji, told almost entirely from the point of view of ginkgo nuts. On a freezing, star-filled morning just before sunrise, the thousand golden nuts of a lone ginkgo tree on a hill wake up knowing…
やまなし — The Wild Pear in the Stream
"Yamanashi" is a short prose poem told from the bottom of a mountain stream, where two young crab brothers and their father watch the world above them through the moving water. The narrator presents it as two slides in a magic-lantern show…
ざしき童子のはなし — Tales of the Parlour Child
This is a short sketch by Miyazawa Kenji about the zashiki-warashi, or 'parlour child', a spirit that folk belief places in old country houses. It is not one continuous story. A gentle narrator from 'our part of the country' strings…
注文の多い料理店 — The Restaurant That Asked Too Much
Miyazawa Kenji's 注文の多い料理店 is a darkly comic fairy tale. Two young gentlemen from Tōkyō come to the mountains to shoot something, anything, for the fun of it. They lose their guide, grow hungry, and come upon a smart Western-style restaurant…
毒もみのすきな署長さん — The Police Chief and His Favourite Pastime
This is a short comic fable by Miyazawa Kenji. It is set in Puhara, an imaginary country where four icy rivers from the glaciers of Mount Karakon meet. The pools on its wide gravel riverbed are full of fish, and the country's very first law…
どんぐりと山猫 — The Wildcat's Acorn Trial
A short fairy tale by Miyazawa Kenji, told in a warm, playful storyteller's voice. A boy named Ichirō receives a clumsy postcard from a wildcat asking him to come and help with a troublesome trial. The next morning he heads up a mountain…
双子の星 — The Star Twins by the Silver River
双子の星 is a fairy tale by Miyazawa Kenji set in the night sky. Chunse and Pōse are two small blue stars who live in crystal palaces on the western bank of the Silver River, the Milky Way. Every night they play silver flutes in time with the…
貝の火 — Homoi and the Shell-Fire Jewel
Kai no Hi is a fairy tale set in a meadow of birches and lilies of the valley, where the animals talk. A young rabbit, Homoi, jumps into a stream to save a lark chick that is being swept away. Soon afterwards the larks bring him the…
オツベルと象 — The White Elephant Who Wandered into Otsuberu's Threshing Shed
Otsuberu and the Elephant is a short fable by Miyazawa Kenji, told aloud by an unnamed cowherd to a listener. Otsuberu is a rich man whose threshing shed roars with machines and farmhands. One day a white elephant wanders in from the…
よだかの星 — How the Nighthawk Became a Star
よだかの星 is a short fable by Miyazawa Kenji about a small, plain bird that everyone else looks down on. The nighthawk is mocked for its appearance, and the hawk even resents that the name よだか contains the word たか ('hawk'). The hawk demands…
雪渡り — Over the Frozen Snow
"Over the Frozen Snow" (雪渡り) is a gentle winter fairy tale by Miyazawa Kenji. On a morning when the snow has frozen hard enough to walk on, two village children, Shirō and his little sister Kanko, cross fields they normally cannot reach. At…