Japanese school introduced me not only to the language but to its literary forms, both high and low. For example, I first learned about haiku in Japanese school, a poetic form that I would return to writing in my later years. I read Japanese folktales I'd never heard of outside of the famous Momotaro and Bamboo Princess. In one of our textbooks, there was a folk tale about a childless old couple who scraped all the dead skin off their body while in the bath and made a doll out of it. They breathed into it and lo, it came to life. They named him, appropriately enough Akataro. Or Dead Skin Boy. My friends and I couldn't believe a Japanese Ministry of Education textbook would contain such a dirty story in it. Here was a Japanese folktale comfortable with frank expressions about the body that we found hilariously inappropriate. However, in the same textbooks, I would also discover the magical writing of Kenji Miyazawa. Miyazawa was a Taisho era children's writer and poet who hailed from the northern part of Japan where the climate was harsh but also starkly beautiful; he wrote imaginative tales of a kind that I never encountered before in English. I would later read his translated poetry and be moved by it also. Miyazawa's writing contained both the wisdom and the innocence of a child; it was a literature that begat wonder, admiration and gratitude.

From The Emperor's Orphans by Sally Ito ©2018. Published by Turnstone Press.