Three Demons
$15.95
by Sanki Saitō
September 24, 2024
poetry | pb | 128 pgs.
5.5" x 8.5"
978-1-960385-27-7
Sanki Saitō (1900-1962), born in Tsuyama, Japan as Keichoku Saitō, was a short story writer and poet best known for his, at the time, controversial modern haiku (shinkō haiku)—works which became emblematic of the New Rising Haiku movement of the 1930s. Where the traditionalists insisted on the inclusion of traditional “season words” and wanted haiku that were based on close observation of the world, the New Rising Haiku poets moved away from the former and in place of the latter, opening the door to imagined experience.
As his reputation as a literary maverick spread, Sanki (a pen name meaning “Three Demons”) was imprisoned in 1940 during the Japanese government’s WWII crackdown on radical artists, and was officially forbidden to write and publish. At the end of the war, Sanki began writing and publishing again, eventually publishing three more collections of verse before his death in 1962.
The haiku in Three Demons have been meticulously curated and beautifully translated by Ryan Choi, drawing from five of Sanki’s volumes of poetry: Flags (1940), Night Peaches (1948), One Hundred Haiku (1948), Today (1952), and Transformations (1962).
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About the Author:
Sanki Saitō (1900-1962) was a Japanese poet and short story writer, most famous for his modern haiku, which he began writing in his thirties while practicing dentistry, and for which he was briefly imprisoned during the Second World War. He published four collections in his lifetime—Flags (1940), Night Peaches (1948), Today (1952), and Transformations (1962). “Sanki” is a nom de plume that means “Three Demons.”
About the Translator:
Ryan Choi is an editor at AGNI. His writings and translations have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Conjunctions, The New Criterion, Raritan, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. He is the translator of In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born and raised.
