Criticism

Khan, Robert Omar. "Heaven and Hell." The San Francisco Review of Books 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991): 58-9.

Includes a positive assessment of Miyazawa's children's story collection Night of the Milky Way Railway.

McKinney, Meredith. "Poems of Miyazawa Kenji: Notes and Translations." Overland 69 (1978): 8-10.

Overview of Miyazawa as a writer who "strove to bring religion and science together." Contains English translations of seven of Miyazawa's free verse poems.

Naff, William E. Review of Spring and Asura: Poems of Kenji Miyazawa. Journal of the American Oriental Society 98, No. 3 (July-September 1978): 300-01.

Surveys the major elements of Miyazawa's life and thought that inform his poetry, such as Buddhist compassion and the ideals of agrarianism.

Sato, Hiroaki. Introduction to A Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist by Kenji Miyazawa, pp. xiii-xvii. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.

Notes the "keen power of observation, imagination, Buddhist vision, and … sense of humor" Miyazawa displays in his poetry and short stories.

Smith, Larry. Review of A Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist. Small Press 8, No. 2 (April 1990): 36.

Comments on the authenticity and humble simplicity of Miyazawa's verse.

Strong, Sarah M. Introduction to Night of the Milky Way Railway, by Kenji Miyazawa, pp. xi-xiii. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1991.

Summarizes young Giovanni's extraterrestrial train ride into the afterlife in Miyazawa's Night of the Milky Way Railway.

Yasuda, Kenneth K. Review of Spring and Asura: Poems of Kenji Miyazawa. The Journal of Asian Studies XXXIV, No. 2 (February 1975): 535-38.

Offers a brief account of Miyazawa's life and literary works.

The following source published by Gale Research contains further information on Miyazawa's life and works: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 157.