Miyazawa Kenji No Onomatopeshū (Onomatopoeia of Kenji Miyazawa) by Atsushi Kurihara (review)

Onomatopoeia is common in Japanese storytelling and written culture as well as in children's literature. "Onomatopoeia abounds in the Japanese language because people often hear nature sounds in their living environment," as the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Eiko Kadono (1935- ) said in her acceptance speech. In the book under review, Kurihara analyzes onomatopoeia in the works of Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933). Kurihara's text analyses are printed alongside the original texts by Miyazawa, so the book displays an example of close reading of a large corpus of the texts of one author.

Kenji Miyazawa laid the foundations of Japanese children's literature today. His children's stories are characterized by closeness to nature and the poetic narrating style with unique onomatopoeia. According to Kurihara, Miyazawa's onomatopoeia expresses his sympathy and awe for nature. Kurihara describes how in Miyazawa's "Chūmon no ōi ryōriten" ("The Restaurant of Many Orders"), the mysterious restaurant appears with the blast sounding "dō," grass rustling "zawazawa," leaves whispering "kasa-kasa," and trees echoing "goton-goton." These sounds make the eerie atmosphere of the story where two hunters nearly become the prey of wild cats. In "Yukiwatari" ("Snow Crossing"), when a brother and a sister agree to visit a fox's lantern show, the fox dances happily, stomping "kikku-kikku-ton-ton, kikku-kikku-ton-ton" on the frozen snow field. With these memorable sounds, readers are invited into a world where all creatures coexist. Miyazawa's world is full of unexpected sounds, such as minerals chattering "kaya-kaya" and drunken frogs snoring "kī-i, kī-i." Their subtle feelings are also captured with onomatopoeia like "korikkori-korikkari," the sound of telephone poles that get angry about signals' misalliance.

Kurihara refers to the literary criticism of Shigeharu Nakano (1902-1979), the leading poet of the twentieth century in Japan, who states that the lack of onomatopoeia tends toward objective narrative but also limited expression. In Kurihara's view, as human words originated in meaningless cries, onomatopoeia can be a recurrence to the holistic cosmos grasped not logically but intuitively, and therefore an expressive art form. Kurihara offers an interesting example of "Shishiodori no hajimari" ("The First Deer Dance"), where a man forgets he is a human, not a deer, and joins their dance when the north wind blows "hyū," alder trees shine like broken iron mirrors, leaves rustle "kachin-kachin," and pampas grass goes round and round with the deer. Based on this story, Kurihara argues that boundaries between species are not always evident for Miyazawa, but on the other hand, his close inspection as a natural scientist leads to realistic depiction with subtle changes of onomatopoeia. While deer go around in the same direction, "guru-guru, guru-guru," that is common onomatopoeia in Japanese; they later go around clockwise and then counterclockwise, "guru-kuru, guru-kuru." According to Kurihara, Miyazawa seems to have invented this new onomatopoeia to express the complicated dance movement based on his close observation of Shishiodori, the traditional dance in the northern Japanese area of Tohoku.

Miyazawa Kenji no onomatopeshū introduces Miyazawa's imaginative world from a new perspective. Among many books and articles about onomatopoeia in Miyazawa's works, this volume introduces the general concept for academic beginners. With the fully academic commentary, it also opens the possibility of comparative research on different language editions of Miyazawa's works, translated by Roger Pulvers (1944- ) and other translators.