The Wing-Beaten Air: My Life and My Writing

by Yorifumi Yaguchi

Acclaimed Japanese poet, Yorifumi Yaguchi, has turned his writing attention to telling baldly what he experienced as a child growing up on the island of Honshu in the late 1930s and '40s.His piercing and disarming prose takes us to his family's vegetable farm within earshot of the sea. We go with him to his grandfather's Buddhist temple, where Yaguchi discovered ninja stories and where the air was as clear as the temple bell that rang each morning and at dusk, dispelling bad spirits and keeping the peace.And then the boy's father suddenly died, and, on the nearby airfield, "dragon-swallower" planes and soldiers rose up, crowing about their victory over the Americans.Yaguchi takes us deep into his heart and mind, and we see and feel and come to know life as he did. Catching fish and birds as a boy, thwarting the playground bullies, taking shelter from bombs in a damp mine, swimming in a bomb pool in the middle of a rice field, losing his childhood fri

214 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008