Introduction and Translation by Janice Brown

Cornell East Asia Series, 2011

Hayashi Fumiko, one of the most popular prose writers of the Showa era, began writing as a down-and-out poet wandering the streets of 1920s Tokyo. In these translations of her first poetry collection, I Saw a Pale Horse (Aouma wo mitari) and Selected Poems from Diary of a Vagabond (Hōrōki), Fumiko's literary origins are colorfully revealed. Little known in the west, these early poetic texts focus on Fumiko's unconventional early life, and her construction of a female subject that would challenge, with gusto and panache, accepted notions not only of class, family, and gender but also of female poetic practice.