Tanikawa diverged from haiku and other traditions, and explored the poetic, not only in the repetitive music of the spoken word but also the magic hidden in little things. Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, has died aged 92. Tanikawa, who translated the Peanuts comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series Astro Boy, died on 13 November, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said today.
He said his father died at a Tokyo hospital due to old age. Shuntaro Tanikawa stunned the literary world with his 1952 debut “Two Billion Light Years of Solitude,” a bold look at the cosmic in daily life. Written before Gabriel García Márquez’ “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” it became a bestseller.
Tanikawa’s “Kotoba Asobi Uta,” or “Word Play Songs,” is a rhythmical experiment in juxtaposing words that sound similar, such as “kappa,” a mythical animal and “rappa,” a horn, that makes for a joyful singsong compilation, filled with alliterations and onomatopoeia. “For me, the Japanese language is the ground. Like a plant, I place my roots, drink in the nutrients of the Japanese language, sprouting leaves, flowers and bearing fruit,” he said in a 2022 interview with AP.
Tanikawa explored the poetic, not only in the repetitive music of the spoken word but also the magic hidden in little things. In every work Tanikawa tackled, including the script for Kon Ichikawa’s , a documentary film of the 1964 Tokyo Games, the respec.
