Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢 賢治 or 宮澤 賢治 , Miyazawa Kenji, 27 August 1896 – 21 September 1933) was a Japanese poet and author of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social activist.
Some of his major works include Night on the Galactic Railroad, Kaze no Matasaburo, Gauche the Cellist, and The Night of Taneyamagahara. Kenji converted to Nichiren Buddhism after reading the Lotus Sutra, and joined the Kokuchūkai, a Nichiren Buddhist organization. His religious and social beliefs created a rift between him and his wealthy family, especially his father, though after his death his family eventually followed him in converting to Nichiren Buddhism. Kenji founded the Rasu Farmers Association to improve the lives of peasants in Iwate Prefecture. He was also a speaker of Esperanto and translated some of his poems into that language.
He died of pneumonia in 1933. Almost totally unknown as a poet in his lifetime, Kenji's work gained its reputation posthumously, and enjoyed a boom by the mid-1990s on his centenary. A museum dedicated to his life and works was opened in 1982 in his hometown. Many of his children's stories have been adapted as anime, most notably Night on the Galactic Railroad. Many of his tanka and free verse poetry, translated into many languages, are still popular today.
Kenji was born in the town of Hanamaki, Iwate, the eldest son of a wealthy pawnbroking couple, Masajirō and his wife Ichi. The family were also pious followers of the Pure Land Sect, as were generally the farmers in that district. His father, from 1898 onwards, organized regular meetings in the district where monks and Buddhist thinkers gave lectures and Kenji, together with his younger sister, took part in these meetings from an early age. The area was an impoverished rice-growing region, and he grew to be troubled by his family's interest in money-making and social status. Kenji was a keen student of natural history from an early age, and also developed an interest as a teenager in poetry, coming under the influence of a local poet, Takuboku Ishikawa. After graduating from middle school, he helped out in his father's pawnshop. By 1918, he was writing in the tanka genre, and had already composed two tales for children. At high school he converted to the Hokke sect after reading the Lotus Sutra, a move which was to bring him into conflict with his father. In 1918, he graduated from Morioka Agriculture and Forestry College (盛岡高等農林学校 , Morioka Kōtō Nōrin Gakkō, now the Faculty of Agriculture at Iwate University) . He embraced vegetarianism in the same year. A bright student, he was then given a position as a special research student in geology, developing an interest in soil science and in fertilizers. Later in 1918, he and his mother went to Tokyo to look after his younger sister Toshi (宮澤トシ , Miyazawa Toshi) , who had fallen ill while studying in Japan Women's University He returned home after his sister had recovered early the following year.
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