Kenji Miyazawa is a famous Japanese children's writer and poet. His works were loved by readers from all over the world, and today, many are familiar with the writer's work.
Kenji Miyazawa Biography
The biography of the writer begins in Japan, in the small village of Hanamaki. Kenji Miyazawa's date of birth fell on August 27, 1896. The writer and poet was born in a wealthy family, which in those years was considered prosperous.
The family in which Kenji Miyazawa grew up had five children. The writer was among them the oldest. Despite the fact that the position of the family was high, Kenji was always worried and considered wrong that the parents lived so richly thanks to the very small savings of the peasants living nearby. Photo Kenji Miyazawa presented in the article.
Education
After graduating from an agricultural school in 1918 in Morioka, Kenji Miyazawa worked at the same place as a graduate student for two more years. Kenji's work was a detailed study of soil and land structures. While working at school, the writer independently learned English, German and Esperanto. Kenji had many interests. In addition to his love of geology, the poet also liked to study astronomy and biology. After he showed himself to be a brilliant student, his supervisor decided to help Kenji become a professor assistant.
Family troubles
Despite the fact that the young writer had a desire to continue his career in science, the dream did not come true: contradictions and quarrels with his father prevented any further scientific success. The writer’s father was determined that his son would continue the usurious family business. However, Miyazawa did not tolerate profit in such a dishonest way: it seemed to him that it was simply disgusting to receive money for those things that are given on bail by the already poor peasants.
Having ensured that he was not attracted to the family business, Kenji abandoned the enterprise, thereby giving the leadership to his younger brother. Another problem for the family was the complete immersion of the eldest son in the teachings of the Buddhist Lotus Sutra. Miyazawa tried to bring his father to his faith, but another quarrel arose from this. Such a strong misunderstanding, which the future writer met in his family, pushed him in 1921 to take a serious step: leaving everything behind, Kenji leaves for Tokyo to build his career and develop there.
The first steps in creativity
It was in Tokyo that Miyazawa met with the work of one of the poets popular at that time - Sakutaro Hagiwara. It was the poems of this writer that pushed Miyazawa to his own literary activity. Kenji lived in Tokyo for less than a year. During his arrival in the capital, the writer often attended meetings of the Nichiren tradition study group. It was at this time that many of his stories about children came out of the hands of Kenji Miyazawa. However, he had to give up inspirational Tokyo and return to his native land, because his parents told the writer that his sister was very ill.
Abrupt change of activity
The sister of the writer could not be cured. Her death greatly shook the poet’s peace of mind. After the funeral, Miyazawa dedicates three poems to his sister, in which he says goodbye to her.
At the end of 1921, the poet got a job in a school, from which he had not so long ago left, to the post of teacher. The students perceived the writer as an eccentric, because Miyazawa demanded that training be built on the personal experience of everyone, so that practical and factual knowledge was the most important element in learning. Kenji often taught lessons with his young students in nature, but besides this, he took children with him on hikes to the mountains, rivers, and fields.
Return to literary activity
Miyazawa decided to return to writing and in 1922 left for South Sakhalin. The writer believed that it was there that he would be able to create an extraordinary work about death. And he was not mistaken - it was on Sakhalin that Kenji managed to do a great job on the allegory novel, which was called “Night on the Galactic Railway”.
Material and financial difficulties
The financial situation of the writer was very difficult. Not having a stable income, Kenji still managed to save some money for his work. It was for these savings in 1924 that Miyazawa publishes his first collection of short stories, intended for a children's audience, “Restaurant with a Large Selection of Dishes”. The writer spent the remaining money on publishing a collection of his poems, but he didn’t have enough money to print a complete collection of books, so only a small part was published.
It did not bring any financial resources. However, the work of Kenji Miyazawa really liked the members of the literary circles, it was they who soon transferred the collections to a world where literature was more important than anything else.
Kenji's death
Hard physical work routinely exhausted the writer. In addition, for many years Miyazawa suffered from tuberculosis, and then the writer found pleurisy, which he tried to cure. The poet managed to escape briefly from pleurisy, but after a while the disease returned and confined Kenji to bed until the very end. Kenji Miyazawa passed away on September 21, 1933.