Kotan Chronicles: Selected Poems 1928-1943

Kotan Chronicles takes the reader into the lives of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Hokkaido, and their interaction with Japanese settlers in the 1920s and 1930s, a period when the traditional world of the kotan, or Ainu village, was being destroyed by the rapid development of the island. With a distinctive and powerful artistic voice, the poems of Genzō Sarashina probe this extraordinary cultural encounter in Japan’s far north, depicting both the beauty of the Hokkaido landscape and the back-breaking work required to survive there in an era of economic hardship. Kotan Chronicles constitutes an exceptional witness of its times.