Preface
Western students of Japanese literature have had little opportunity to study the renaissance of poetic inspiration which originated during the closing years of the nineteenth century. It produced such significant writers as Takuboku Ishikawa, Sachio Ito, and Akahiko Shimaki, and among the living poets Mrs. Akiko Yosano, Hakushu Kitahara, and Dr. Mokichi Saito, who are the leaders of their own schools. The purpose of the Modern Japanese Poets Series is to introduce them.
The present volume, the third of the series, includes a small but significant portion of the poems by Sachio Ito, who is a stranger to the West. For my text I followed the revised and enlarged edition of his collected work, published in 1931. The first one hundred and forty-four poems are in the classical form of thirty-one syllables, while the last six conform to the pattern of ancient odes. I have aimed at a scrupulously exact translation and have tried to retain
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