Shuntarō Tanikawa

Shuntarō Tanikawa
Shuntarō Tanikawa
谷川俊太郎
	Shuntarō Tanikawa, 2015
Born	December 15, 1931 (age 92); Suginami, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation(s)	Poet and author
Notable work	Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (1952)
Spouse(s)	Eriko Kishida (married 1954-1955); Tomoko Okubo (married 1957-1989) ; Yōko Sano (married 1990-1996)
Children	Kensaku Tanigawa [ja]
Father	Tetsuzō Tanikawa

Shuntarō Tanikawa (谷川俊太郎, Tanikawa Shuntarō) (born December 15, 1931, in Suginami, Japan) is a Japanese poet and translator.^[1] He is considered to be one of the most widely read and highly regarded of living Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad.^[2] The English translation of his poetry volume Floating the River in Melancholy, translated by William I. Eliott^[3] and Kazuo Kawamura and illustrated by Yoko Sano, won the American Book Award in 1989.

Life

Tanikawa has written more than 60 books of poetry in addition to translating Charles Schulz's Peanuts and the Mother Goose rhymes into Japanese. He was nominated for the 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Award for his contributions to children's literature. He was awarded Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evening in 2022. He also helped translate Swimmy by Leo Lionni into Japanese.

Among his contributions to less conventional art genres is Tanikawa's open video correspondence with Shūji Terayama (Video Letter, 1983). Since the 1970s, Tanikawa also provided short, onomatopoeic verses for picture books he published in collaboration with visual artist Sadamasa Motonaga, whom he had befriended during his residency in New York in 1966, offered by the Japan Society.

He has collaborated several times with the lyricist Chris Mosdell, including creating a deck of cards created in the omikuji fortune-telling tradition of Shinto shrines, titled The Oracles of Distraction.^[4] Tanikawa also co-wrote Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad and wrote the lyrics to the theme song of Howl's Moving Castle (film). Together with Jerome Rothenberg and Hiromi Itō, he has participated in collaborative renshi poetry, pioneered by Makoto Ōoka.^[5]

The philosopher Tetsuzō Tanikawa was his father. The poet and translator Eriko Kishida was his first wife. The author-illustrator Yōko Sano was his third wife, and illustrated a volume of his poems: Onna Ni, translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura (Shueisha, 2012).^[6]

Selected works

Poetry (selected)

Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (Sogensha, 1952)
Sixty-two Sonnets (Sogensha, 1953), later published by Kodansha Plus Alpha Bunko
On Love (Tokyo Sogensha, 1955)
To You (Tokyo Sogensha, 1960)
21, (Thought Society, 1962)
With silence my companion
Crestfallen
At midnight in the kitchen …
The day the birds disappeared from the sky
Definitions
Coca-Cola Lessons
A letter
Floating down the river in melancholy
Songs of nonsense
Naked
On giving people poems
The naif
Listening to Mozart
To a woman
Rather than pure white
Minimal
Mickey Mouse by night
A Chagall and a leaf
Me
Kokoro (Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2013)
Ordinary People

Novels and drama

"The Rules of Flowers" Rironsha 1967
"Pe (Collection of Short Stories)" Kodansha Bunko 1982
"It's Always Now: Drama Collection by Shuntaro Tanikawa" Yamato Shobo 2009

Songs for television, radio and film (selected)

Astro Boy (composed by Tatsuo Takai) - Theme song of the anime of the same name
Big X (Composer: Isao Tomita) - Theme song of the anime of the same name
Firebird (composed by Michel Legrand) - theme song for the movie of the same name
If it's dangerous, it'll be money (composed by Harumi Ibe) - Theme song of the movie of the same name
Promise of the World (composed by Yumi Kimura) - Theme song for the movie "Howl's Moving Castle" Sung by Chieko Baisho
The Unborn Child (composed by Toru Takemitsu, 1963) - Theme song for the film "She and He" (directed by Susumu Hani, Iwanami Productions)
KISS AND HUG (Composer: MISIA) - Theme song for the radio program of the same name
Our Morning (composed by Hitoshi Komuro) - Theme song for Nippon Television's "Our Morning" Sung by Shigeru Matsuzaki

Awards and nominations

1962 - Won the 4th Japan Record Award for Best Lyricist for "Getsu Ka Sui Moku Kin Do Ni No Uta"
1975 - Received the Japan Translation Culture Award for "Mother Goose Songs"
1983 - Yomiuri Literature Prize for "Daily Maps"
1985 - Received the Hanatsubaki Prize for Contemporary Poetry for "Yoshinashi Uta"
1988 - Noma Children's Literature Prize for "Hadaka: A Collection of Poems by Shuntaro Tanikawa" and Shogakukan Literature Prize for "First Grader"
1992 - Maruyama Yutaka Memorial Contemporary Poetry Award for "Woman"
1993 - Received the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize for "Senkichirazu"
1996 – Asahi Prize
2005 - Japan Cultural Design Award
2006 - Mainichi Art Award for "Chagall and the Leaves"
2008 - Received the Poetry and Literature Museum Award for "I"
2010 - Received the Nobuo Ayukawa Award for "Tromso Collage"
2011 – Won the Zhongkun International Poetry Award, China's highest private award for poetry .
2016 - Received the Miyoshi Tatsuji Award for "On Poetry"
2019 - The Japan Foundation Awards
2022 - Winner of the Gold Award at the Struga Poetry Evening
2023 - The 75th NHK Broadcasting Culture Awards