Cat Town by Hagiwara, Sakutaro

Cat Town

Modernist poet Sakutarō Hagiwara's first published book, Howling at the Moon, shattered conventional verse forms and transformed...
$37.63 SGD
$37.63 SGD
SKU: 9781590177754
Product Type: Books
Please hurry! Only 0 left in stock
Author: Sakutaro Hagiwara
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $37.63
10 customers are viewing this product
Cat Town by Hagiwara, Sakutaro

Cat Town

$37.63

Cat Town

$37.63
Author: Sakutaro Hagiwara
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Modernist poet Sakutarō Hagiwara's first published book, Howling at the Moon, shattered conventional verse forms and transformed the poetic landscape of Japan. Two of its poems were removed on order of the Ministry of the Interior for "disturbing social customs." Along with the entirety of Howling, this volume includes all of Blue Cat, Hagiwara's second major collection, together with Cat Town, a prose-poem novella, and a substantial selection of verse from the rest of his books, giving readers the full breadth and depth of this pioneering poet's extraordinary work.

Author: Sakutaro Hagiwara
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 11/11/2014
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 6.90h x 4.40w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781590177754

About the Author
Sakutarō Hagiwara (1886-1942) was born in Maebashi, Gunma, the eldest of six children. His father was a successful physician, and Hagiwara enjoyed a sheltered and pampered childhood. At age fifteen he discovered literature and began writing classical tanka verse and publishing in literary magazines. As a young student he moved frequently throughout Japan, unable to finish college, prone to illness, and tormented by youthful lust. In Tokyo, he learned to play the mandolin and guitar, and upon returning to his hometown founded a musicians' club called Gondola Western Music Society. By 1913, Hagiwara had abandoned classical metrical schemes in his poetry for free verse. He became a founding member of the Mermaid Poetry Society, worked as an editor at literary magazines, and in 1917 published his first book of poetry, Howling at the Moon, which was an immediate success and transformed modern Japanese verse forever. An arranged marriage in 1919 produced two daughters and ended ten years later with his wife eloping with her dance partner; a second marriage in 1938 lasted a year, again with his wife fleeing. His mother is quoted as saying, "He spent all his income from his writing on booze. He was good for nothing, but with all that drinking, he neither increased nor decreased the family money." After turning to essays and aphorisms for several years, Hagiwara eventually published his second poetry collection, Blue Cat, in 1923. These two books of poems--noted for their sensual philosophy, intimate gloom, symbolist imagery, riveting self-exploration, and confessions of vulgar secrets that blended the literary with the daily vernacular--marked the peak of Hagiwara's creative heights. Of his writing process, Hagiwara wrote to a friend, "I am merely catching a kind of rhythm that flows at the bottom of my heart and unconsciously pursuing the rhythm, therefore at the time of creation my own self is merely something like a half-conscious automatic machine." He would go on to write four more books of poems and prose poems, as well as other collections of essays. Hagiwara taught at Meiji University from 1934 until his death from pneumonia at the age of fifty-five.

Hiroaki Sato is the author of Snow in a Silver Bowl: A Quest for the World of Yugen and One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English, among other books. He is a contributor to a greatly expanded adaptation of Naoki Inose's Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, and the co-editor with Burton Watson of the landmark volume From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, which won the PEN American Center Translation Prize. Sato has translated three dozen books of Japanese literature and poetry, most recently, The Iceland by Sakutarō Hagiwara and, with Nancy Sato, So Happy to See Cherry Blossoms: Haiku from the Year of the Great Earthquake and Tsunami. He has also translated various American poets into Japanese, among them John Ashbery, Charles Reznikoff, and Jerome Rothenberg. Since 2000 Sato has written a regular column for The Japan Times.

Returns Policy

You may return most new, unopened items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. We'll also pay the return shipping costs if the return is a result of our error (you received an incorrect or defective item, etc.).

You should expect to receive your refund within four weeks of giving your package to the return shipper, however, in many cases you will receive a refund more quickly. This time period includes the transit time for us to receive your return from the shipper (5 to 10 business days), the time it takes us to process your return once we receive it (3 to 5 business days), and the time it takes your bank to process our refund request (5 to 10 business days).

If you need to return an item, simply login to your account, view the order using the "Complete Orders" link under the My Account menu and click the Return Item(s) button. We'll notify you via e-mail of your refund once we've received and processed the returned item.

Shipping

We can ship to virtually any address in the world. Note that there are restrictions on some products, and some products cannot be shipped to international destinations.

When you place an order, we will estimate shipping and delivery dates for you based on the availability of your items and the shipping options you choose. Depending on the shipping provider you choose, shipping date estimates may appear on the shipping quotes page.

Please also note that the shipping rates for many items we sell are weight-based. The weight of any such item can be found on its detail page. To reflect the policies of the shipping companies we use, all weights will be rounded up to the next full pound.

Related Products

Recently Viewed Products