Shuntaro Tanikawa has been the most inventive modern Japanese poet, ever since he published Two Billion Light Years of Solitude (1952), his first book, aged twenty one. Undamaged by Japan's post-War trauma, he took up the language and ran with it. He has continued running. When in 1968 his first Collected Poems appeared the critics noted at once his popularity and his refusal to compromise with the negative tones that dominated the poetic palette of contemporary Japan. This new selection supplements his original Selected Poems published by Carcanet in 1998.

Shuntaro Tanikawa has produced some 60 books of poetry (some of them bestsellers) and won every major Japanese award for his writing. An English translation of his work received the American Book Award in 1988. He has written video, radio and film scripts and plays for children. He is the translator of the Mother Goose rhymes and has for many years been the translator of Peanuts. William I. Elliott is Professor of English and American Literature at Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama.