Kirkup, James.

Heaven, Hell and Hara-Kiri – The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Superstate.

London / Sydney / Singapore / Manila, Angus & Robertson, 1974. 14 cm x 22.2 cm. X, 278 pages. Original Hardcover with dustjacket in protective collector’s Mylar. Excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. From the reference library of Hans Christian Andersen-Translator Erik Haugaard.

Includes for example the following essays: The Robata Festival / The Aesthetics of Suicide / The Birth of the Eight Isles / The Japanese Theatre / Noh Plays and Players / The Kabuki I Love etc.

James Falconer Kirkup, FRSL (23 April 1918 – 10 May 2009), born James Harold Kirkup, was an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He wrote under many pen-names including James Falconer, Jun Honda, Andrew James, Taeko Kawai, Felix Liston, Edward Raeburn, and Ivy B. Summerforest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

Kirkup came to public attention in 1977, after the newspaper Gay News published his poem The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name, in which a Roman centurion describes his lust for and attraction to the crucified Jesus. The paper was successfully prosecuted in the Whitehouse v Lemon case, along with the editor, Dennis Lemon, for blasphemous libel under the Blasphemy Act 1697, by Mary Whitehouse, then Secretary of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association.

After writing simple verses and rhymes from the age of six, and the publication of his first poetry book The Drowned Sailor in 1947, Kirkup’s published works encompassed several dozen collections of poetry, six volumes of autobiography, over a hundred monographs of original work and translations and thousands of shorter pieces in journals and periodicals. His skilled writing of haiku and tanka is acknowledged internationally. Many of his poems recall his childhood days in the north-east, and are featured in such publications as The Sense of the Visit, To the Ancestral North, Throwback, and Shields Sketches.

In 1995, James Hogg and Wolfgang Görtschacher (University of Salzburg Press / Poetry Salzburg) received a letter from Andorra signed by Kirkup, who had just returned from Japan. Kirkup suggested the republication of some of his early books that had been out of print for quite a while. At the same time he wanted to offer new manuscripts that would establish the Salzburg imprint as his principal publisher. What started in 1995 with the collection Strange Attractors and A Certain State of Mind – the latter an anthology of classic, modern and contemporary Japanese haiku – ended after more than a dozen publications with the epic poem Pikadon in 1997.

His home town of South Shields now holds a growing collection of his works in the Central Library, and artefacts from his time in Japan are housed in the nearby Museum. His last volume of poetry was published during the summer of 2008 by Red Squirrel Press, and was launched at a special event at Central Library in South Shields. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Eastern Philosophy · Eastern Philosophy – Rare · Eastern Philosophy and Culture · Eastern Philosophy and Culture Rare · Hara-Kiri · Harakiri · Japan · Japanese Festivals · Japanese History · Japanese History – Rare · Japanese Plays · Japanese Studies · Noh Theatre
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0207955611
• Inventory Number: 200177AB

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