Shuntarō Tanikawa

Shuntarō Tanikawa studied at Toyotama High School, Tokyo. The recorded working language is Japanese and English. The field of work recorded is free verse, literature and poetry. Work by Shuntarō Tanikawa is recorded in the collections of Oregon Poetry Collection and Museum of Modern Art. Distinctions recorded are Hanatsubaki Award for Contemporary Poetry, Noma award for children's literature, American Book Awards and Hagiwara Sakutarō Award.

• Name — Shuntarō Tanikawa • Native Name — 谷川俊太郎 • Born — 15 December 1931 • Birthplace — Suginami, Japan • Died — 13 November 2024 • Occupation — Poet, translator • Notable Works — Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (1952) • Children — Kensaku Tanikawa Shino Tanikawa • Father — Tetsuzō Tanikawa December 15, 1931 – November 13, 2024 was a Japanese poet, translator, children's author, and screenwriter. He was considered to be one of the most widely read and highly regarded Japanese poets, both in Japan and abroad. The English translation of his poetry volume Floating the River in Melancholy, translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura and illustrated by Yōko Sano, won the American Book Award in 1989.

• Illustration — Tanikawa in the 1950s 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 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. 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.

Tanikawa was born in 1931 to a philosopher Tetsuzō Tanikawa. When Tanikawa was 20, his father gave Tatsuji Miyoshi a notebook full of Tanikawa's high school poetry, which led to his Tanikawa's first work being published. Tanikawa was divorced three times. His first wife was poet and translator Eriko Kishida. His third wife was author-illustrator Yōko Sano. Sano illustrated a volume of his poems: Onna Ni, translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura (Shueisha, 2012). Tanikawa died in Tokyo on November 13, 2024, at the age of 92. He was survived by his son, composer Kensaku Tanikawa, his daughter, Shino Tanikawa, and several grandchildren.

• 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

• "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

• Peanuts